RPA vs AI agents: why your bots break (and how to avoid it)

If your operations team spends its days firefighting every time a vendor changes a screen, you know the problem with traditional RPA: it is fragile. And the numbers confirm it.

The problem with traditional RPA, in data

According to research from Ernst & Young and Deloitte, between 30% and 50% of initial RPA projects fail or fall short of expectations, mainly due to fragility, maintenance cost and the inability to handle exceptions. Figures of up to 45% of firms reporting weekly bot breakage have been cited, and between 70% and 75% of cost goes on implementation and ongoing support. Deloitte also estimates that only 3% of organizations have successfully scaled RPA.

How traditional RPA works

RPA records a sequence of steps — clicks, copy, paste — and repeats it. It is fast and cheap for stable tasks, but it does not understand what it does: if the button moves or an unforeseen case arrives, it fails. It is tied to fixed rules and selectors.

What changes with an AI agent

An AI agent does not follow a rigid script: it interprets the goal, reasons with context and decides the next step. When the process changes, it adapts instead of breaking. Gartner already talks of a "new era of agentic automation" in its 2026 predictions: agents that interpret unstructured data and execute decisions in real time.

• RPA: ideal for repetitive, stable, high-volume tasks.
• AI agents: ideal for processes with exceptions, decisions or unstructured documents.
• Best of all: combine them. The agent orchestrates and reuses your RPA bots where they make sense.

Where traditional RPA breaks when the process changes, Twinny’s agents adapt.

A warning to avoid the other extreme

Agentic AI is not magic. Gartner itself forecasts that more than 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled before the end of 2027 due to escalating costs, unclear business value or inadequate risk controls. The lesson: start with a concrete process and a measurable business case, not with the technology.

You do not have to choose

Twinny automates any business process by combining RPA + AI in a single platform. It keeps your bots where they are efficient and puts AI where RPA fails, with a high ROI and European compliance by default. For the feature-by-feature comparison, see our RPA vs AI agents comparison.