Enterprise RPA.Zero License Fees.Every Line Auditable.
Script bots that click, scrape, parse, and post across legacy ERPs and modern APIs. No vendor contracts. No black-box executors. Just YAML and a git repo.
npx automate init my-bot▋<span class="code-cmt"># invoice-processor.yaml</span>
<span class="code-key">trigger</span>: <span class="code-val">cron("0 2 * * *")</span>
<span class="code-key">steps</span>:
- <span class="code-key">action</span>: <span class="code-str">browser.navigate</span>
<span class="code-key">url</span>: <span class="code-val">$ERP_PORTAL_URL</span>
- <span class="code-key">action</span>: <span class="code-str">dom.click</span>
<span class="code-key">selector</span>: <span class="code-val">"#export-btn"</span>
- <span class="code-key">action</span>: <span class="code-str">file.parse_csv</span>
- <span class="code-key">action</span>: <span class="code-str">api.post</span>
<span class="code-key">endpoint</span>: <span class="code-val">$ACCOUNTING_API</span>
<span class="code-cmt"># 14 lines. No GUI. No license.</span>Why engineers leave proprietary RPA
Six-Figure Invoices for Basic Automation
UiPath Orchestrator: $42,000/yr. Automation Anywhere: $68,000/yr. Blue Prism: $110,000/yr. Three bots. One finance approval cycle. Six months before anything runs.
Proprietary Formats. Proprietary Executors.
Your bot logic lives in a vendor's GUI. Export it? You get an unreadable binary blob. Migrate to a new vendor? Start from scratch. Every bot is a hostage.
Black-Box Executors Fail Silently.
Bot crashes at 2 a.m. The vendor log says "execution error." No stack trace. No line number. Support ticket SLA: 72 hours. Your invoice run: missed.
Vendor Roadmap Moves at Vendor Speed.
SAP updated their DOM structure. Your bot broke. You filed a support ticket. The vendor will patch it "in the next quarterly release." That's 90 days.
YAML Config. Git Push. Done.
Automate runs on your infra. License cost: $0. You pay for compute you already own. A 3-bot deployment takes 14 minutes, not 14 weeks.
cost_breakdown: automate_license: $0.00 infra (k8s): $18/mo vs_uipath: -$41,982/yr roi_year_1: "+$41,982"
Every Bot Lives in Git.
Automate bots are plain YAML. Run them on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, or a Raspberry Pi. Fork, diff, merge, roll back — it's just version control.
# git diff invoice-bot.yaml - selector: "#legacy-btn-v2" + selector:"#export-button" # Community patch merged in 4hrs # PR #441 by @devops-han
Full Stack Trace. Every Time.
Automate logs every selector, every click, every API response with timestamps. When it fails, you have a 40-line trace pinpointing the exact DOM element that moved.
[02:14:33] STEP 3 — dom.click selector: "#export-btn" ✓ [02:14:34] STEP 4 — file.parse_csv rows_parsed: 1,847 ✓ [02:14:35] STEP 5 — api.post status: 200 OK ✓ [02:14:35] ✓ Bot completed in 2.1s
Community Patches in Hours.
When SAP updated their DOM in March 2026, a community PR was merged 4 hours later. 214 contributors watch the connector registry. No ticket required.
# GitHub pulse — last 30 days commits: 847 contributors: 214 issues_closed: 312 avg_pr_merge: 6.2hrs connectors: 214 (+18)
Everything a bot needs. Nothing it doesn't.
DOM Click & Form Fill
Navigate any web UI. Click buttons, fill inputs, handle dropdowns — even inside iframes and shadow DOM. Works on SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, and anything else.
Structured Web Scraping
Extract tables, PDFs, JSON feeds. Handles JavaScript-rendered pages with headless Chromium. Respects robots.txt and rate limits by default.
Multi-Format Parsing
CSV, XLSX, XML, EDI, PDF invoices, JSON. Built-in schema validation. Outputs clean typed structs.
API Posting & Webhooks
POST to REST, GraphQL, SOAP. OAuth 2.0 and API key auth built in. Retry with exponential backoff. Dead-letter queue for failed payloads.
Trigger Anything
Cron, webhook, file-watch, email-arrival, or database row insert. Chain bots. Fan out. Compose pipelines in YAML.
Legacy ERP Native
SAP GUI, Oracle Forms, Dynamics NAV. Terminal emulator support for IBM AS/400 green-screen automation. No middleware required.
Teams that shipped the migration
"We had 47 Selenium scripts held together with cron jobs and prayers. Migrated everything to Automate in a weekend. The YAML diffs in PR reviews alone saved us from three production incidents."
"UiPath quoted us $88,000 for the license plus $40,000 implementation. I showed the CFO the Automate bill — $0 licensing, $340/mo infra. We were live in 3 weeks. The CFO now calls it the best IT decision in five years."
"I needed invoice processing at 2 a.m. without hiring anyone. Automate's cron trigger + ERP connector handles 300 invoices a night. I wake up to a clean Slack summary. No night shift."
"Auditability was non-negotiable for HIPAA. Every bot action logged, every selector timestamped, every API call traceable. We passed our compliance audit with the git history as evidence."
"We automate SAP GUI workflows that Blue Prism couldn't even touch. The AS/400 terminal connector handles our legacy ERP that hasn't changed since 1998. No one else offers that."
"The self-healing selectors are the feature nobody talks about but everyone needs. When our vendor portal updated their DOM, the bot adapted and kept running. I found out from the Slack summary, not a 3 a.m. alert."