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It's a split decision.
Choose Power Automate if you need cloud workflows or attended or unattended RPA, especially across Microsoft-centric systems. Its Premium plan is listed at $15/user/month, billed yearly; the 30-day trial is not a free plan. Choose Smartsheet for project, portfolio and resource planning, with a lower listed entry price: $9/member/month billed yearly on Pro. Smartsheet is not a like-for-like automation replacement, and its Pro plan limits automations to 250 per month. Overall, these tools serve different jobs; pick by whether work orchestration or project visibility is the priority.
01Side by side
| Power Automate | Smartsheet | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $15/user/month, billed yearly | $9/member/month, billed yearly |
| Free plan | No free plan; 30-day trial | No free plan or trial listed |
| Best for | Microsoft-centric workflow automation | Structured project and portfolio management |
| Core strength | Cloud flows and desktop RPA | Project, portfolio, and resource planning |
| Learning curve | Ease-of-use review score: 6/10 | Ease-of-use review score: 6/10 |
| Integrations/data | More than 1,000 prebuilt connectors | Connected workflows; connector count not published |
| Team/seat costs | $15/user/month yearly; bots cost more | $9/member/month yearly; Pro has 1–10 members |
| Support | Support review score: 5/10 | Support review score: 5/10 |
Power Automate Choose Power Automate if
- Choose Power Automate if you need cloud flows across apps and services.
- Choose Power Automate if you need attended or unattended desktop RPA.
- Choose Power Automate if process and task mining matter to your workflows.
Smartsheet Choose Smartsheet if
- Choose Smartsheet if you manage projects, portfolios, and milestones.
- Choose Smartsheet if you need resource planning and workload balancing.
- Choose Smartsheet if you want project tracking with a lower listed entry price.
02Pricing compared
Power Automate Premium is listed at $15 per user/month, billed yearly. It includes cloud flows, attended desktop flows, and process and task mining with 50 MB of stored data. The 30-day trial is free, but there is no free plan. Unattended bots cost more: Process is $150 per bot/month and Hosted Process is $215 per bot/month, both billed yearly. Process Mining is a $5,000-per-tenant/month add-on, available only with Premium.
Smartsheet Pro is $9 per member/month billed yearly, or $12 with monthly billing. Pro covers 1–10 members and caps automations at 250 per month. Business is $19 per member/month billed yearly or $24 monthly, with unlimited automations and a 3-member minimum. Enterprise and Advanced Work Management have custom pricing. These prices cover different jobs, so compare the automation or project-planning tier you actually need.
03Features and depth
These products solve different problems. Power Automate is for automating work across apps, data, services, websites, and legacy systems. It offers cloud flows, attended and unattended desktop RPA, natural-language Copilot authoring, and more than 1,000 prebuilt connectors, according to the product details. Process and task mining help identify automation opportunities; Managed Environments add governance, monitoring, and data-loss prevention controls.
Smartsheet is centered on project and portfolio coordination: connected workflows, dashboards, resource and capacity planning, milestone and dependency tracking, and intake and approval workflows. Its client-delivery features include collaboration portals and resource forecasting. The platform also describes AI work intelligence for project insights and portfolio visibility.
That makes Smartsheet a poor one-for-one replacement for Power Automate if the requirement is RPA or cross-app process automation. Power Automate is not a like-for-like substitute for Smartsheet’s project, portfolio, and resource-planning tools. Choose based on whether you need to orchestrate tasks across systems or give teams visibility into plans and workloads.
04Ease of use and learning curve
Our review scores give both products 6/10 for ease of use, so they do not point to a clear winner. Power Automate offers Copilot for creating and editing automations in natural language, but its feature set also spans cloud flows, desktop RPA, process mining, and governance. The right setup depends on which of those you need.
Smartsheet’s focus is project and portfolio work: plans, resources, milestones, and intake workflows. That may fit teams already organizing work around those needs, but the published materials do not detail onboarding or learning resources. We would choose by task fit rather than assume either product is easier to learn.
Questions people ask
Why should I use Smartsheet?
Use Smartsheet if your priority is project and portfolio visibility, resource planning, milestone tracking, or intake and approval workflows. Its Pro plan starts at $9 per member/month billed yearly, but caps automations at 250 per month. It is not a direct replacement for Power Automate’s RPA and process automation.
Which is better, Power Automate or Zapier?
The information here covers Power Automate and Smartsheet, not Zapier, so we can’t make a grounded feature or price comparison. Power Automate is the option described here for cloud workflows and attended or unattended RPA. Compare Zapier’s current plan limits and pricing against the specific flows you need.
What are some good Microsoft alternatives to Smartsheet?
Power Automate is a Microsoft product, but it is built for workflow automation and RPA, not as a like-for-like project and portfolio planning replacement. The information available here does not establish which other Microsoft tools match Smartsheet’s project, resource, and portfolio features.
Can Smartsheet integrate with MS Teams?
The published product details do not confirm a native Microsoft Teams integration or specify its availability by plan. Smartsheet describes connecting workflows and lists Connectors among its add-ons, but that does not establish Teams support. Check Smartsheet’s current integration documentation and plan requirements before switching.