What you are actually choosing between
Nobody compares an AI agent to nothing. They compare it to a person, a tool, a hire, or the subscription they already pay for. Each of these pages says plainly when the other thing is the better buy.
Comparison pages are usually written by whoever wins the comparison. These are too — we sell one side of every one of them. What we have tried to do instead is put the honest case for the other side in writing, near the top, where it is inconvenient. Across the 5 pages below there are 21 specific reasons to buy the other thing, and they are not padding. If a page never tells you to buy something else, we have failed at it.
How to read one of these
Skip the table first and go to the “choose the other thing when” list at the bottom. If two or more of those describe your situation, you have your answer and you can close the tab — that is the fastest use of these pages and the one we would want if we were buying.
The at-a-glance table is for when none of them fit. It is deliberately not scored, and there is no total at the bottom, because the dimensions are not weighted equally for any two buyers. A row that decides it for one company is irrelevant to the next.
What is deliberately missing. There is no “AI agents vs chatbots” page, despite it having the best search demand of any candidate we looked at. The searcher is choosing customer-service software rather than an operator, the first page of results is four vendors defending a core commercial term, and there is nothing honest we could say that they cannot say equally well. Volume is not a reason to build a page. The reasoning for the other three we dropped is written into the source file, not hidden.
Virtual Assistant vs AI Agent
These two land on the same budget line for a company of 10 to 100 people, which is why the comparison keeps coming up. They are not substitutes.
AI Agents vs RPA
RPA follows a path you recorded. An agent interprets. That difference decides both which one fits and what it costs you to keep running.
AI Agency vs Building In-House
Almost every build-versus-buy article is written by someone selling one of the two. Here is the version that names when you should not hire us.
Custom vs Off-the-Shelf AI Agents
Custom is right less often than the people selling custom will tell you. Here is the boundary, and it is usually 80/20.
ChatGPT vs an AI Agent
This is a fair question and it deserves a real answer rather than a sales one. Often the honest answer is that your ChatGPT seats are enough.
If none of these is the comparison you are making
The two questions underneath most of them are what a build costs and what it returns. What it costs to build an AI agent and the salary comparison handle the first; the ROI calculator handles the second with your own numbers rather than ours. If you want to see what vendors charge before talking to any of them, the pricing index is every published price we could find, quoted verbatim.