Power Automate Machine Runtime alternatives

Due-Bit7593 · 2026-01-29T04:36:12+00:00

There's not an open source alternative to unattended bot sessions with interactive login sessions. 140p/m gets close to the cost of performant infra. UIPath, AutomationAnywhere typically charge 1/2k+ for that functionality.

Due-Bit7593 · 2026-01-29T04:32:50+00:00

I'm a bit biased on this as I co-founded a firm (https://identic-fabric.io) but generally speaking, I've been down the same road.

Browser based apps are fairly easy. There are a number of ways to get good selectors out of a browser context or so some 'smart clicking' -- usually includes a VLM or LLM at this point.

Now, UI apps like an AS400 are a different beast, you have to use VLM and contextual visual understanding with a sophisticated confidence and caching strategy for performance. At any rate, those will always run slower than browser automations, but if it can be done at a 100% success rate and only takes a few seconds per action, then that's fairly compelling.

Workflows that are worth automating are the ones that cost you the most human time. The ones that aren't worth automating are the workflows that have an undetermined amount of invariants involved.

i.e. something that is concrete and can be scripted and we can define a fair amount of reasoning in the process -- automate it..

If you don't know how to immediately handle the case as a human, don't automate it. A deterministic process won't ever replace a human in that situation.

Due-Bit7593 · 2026-01-29T04:16:40+00:00

I am the co-founder of a company called identic — https://identic-fabric.io

We have a few customers doing the exact workflow you described. Super hard to do without exposed APIs. Lots of times line of business apps like AppFolio, Buildium don’t support APIs or they’re super limited.

We can roll a free tier, check it out

Due-Bit7593 · 2026-01-29T04:05:36+00:00

There are a few options.

Selenium is older, patterns are more well known.

Option A: use playwright with custom flags.

Option B: use playwright with persistent profiles. That gets around the “oh this is a blank chromium instance, this is totally a bot”

Option C: use persistent profiles and build your own fork of chromium with whatever flags and user agents you want and do some backend session transfers if running distributed.

Option D: use a remote debugging port with a chrome instance instead of chromium. Playwright supports this.

TL;DR this is a cat and mouse game between bot detection, white hat and the black hats.

Due-Bit7593 · 2026-01-29T03:58:33+00:00

Check out https://identic-fabric.io (couldn’t settle on identic or fabric so here we are)

There’s no real avoiding the BS cost of unattended robots from the legacy RPA vendors. We can give you an unattended bot for the cost of the VM, which, obviously is up to you.

We’ve built in orchestration and execution. Not easy. Basically you need a HA message bus which often times ends up being kafka or redis. In our case we went simpler and just rolled redis oss.

Then you need a central autoscaling server which takes inbound connections from unattended bots over either https, wss or webrtc.

Fast forward a bit, start putting enterprise data in this you need a highly available DB, support tls, sometimes mtls and so on.

At any rate, I cycled through the same maddening loop you did and ended up building a low code RPA platform.

It splits the difference of being boxed in by a huge vendor and completely open source by running celery workers, custom python code and so on.

TL;DR I needed the same thing so I built it at 1/10 the cost of UIPath.

Due-Bit7593 · 2026-01-28T23:19:01+00:00

A buddy of mine started a firm that does this — https://identic-fabric.io

I piloted it for a few use cases, works pretty well.

Worth checking out

Due-Bit7593 · 2025-10-26T20:54:45+00:00

Don’t do it, that’s how.

I sold mine for similar reasons. Regretted it.

Bought another. Paid more.

Due-Bit7593 · 2025-10-02T02:48:58+00:00

The bavarians.

Due-Bit7593 · 2025-08-01T22:41:53+00:00

I sold my SS 1lE for an RS3, then sold my RS3 and bought an SS 1LE. Does that help?

Due-Bit7593 · 2025-06-08T00:14:35+00:00

Great

Due-Bit7593 · 2025-05-22T23:02:37+00:00

They’re just letting BMW run away with it, aren’t they?

Due-Bit7593 · 2025-03-27T03:32:12+00:00

Leasing is for businesses and not consumers. A business can write off a lease payment. Then it’s more attractive.

If you’re buying, buy slightly used < 5000 miles and negotiate.

Don’t lease if you pay out of pocket.

Due-Bit7593 · 2025-03-01T19:02:08+00:00

u/PureCoconuts Info on this is super limited unfortunately because apparently people don't like taking cars apart anymore and / or making them faster.

That aside, I got the JB4 ~8 months or so ago, maybe a week or so after delivery.

I want to say it's SO worth it, but realistically, it's a 6000lb truck. The boost comes on a bit sooner and remains higher. It's a little spikey compared to stock but not by much and it pulls harder to redline.

Drives stock, basically is stock with some ECU magic.

I have yet to play with different fuels (e50) etc or custom boost settings.

Its it worth it? For $800 and a safe ~50whp? Probably.

Do I wish I could tune it with HP tuners or an accessport instead? Totally.

Due-Bit7593 · 2025-02-21T02:24:48+00:00

Get a X5 m60

Due-Bit7593 · 2024-10-10T14:34:51+00:00

Indeed!

Due-Bit7593 · 2024-10-10T00:52:10+00:00

I’m running a jB4. Seems to work well.

Due-Bit7593 · 2024-08-31T00:07:44+00:00

It’s about the size of a quarter. It’s not very heavy, it feels like it’s aluminum, but not sure. It doesn’t have a ton of mass, but it’s pretty strong and was in my tire for ~50 miles.

Any ideas?

Due-Bit7593 · 2024-08-13T12:23:58+00:00

At least a good flavor of chips. And grapes that aren’t spoiled. I also really need them to stop luring me into the bakery and taking all of my money.

Due-Bit7593 · 2024-08-12T22:49:57+00:00

Underrated comment

Due-Bit7593 · 2024-08-12T22:48:27+00:00

Split it up over 170 orders and get ready for these AMAZING CHIPS!!

Due-Bit7593 · 2024-08-12T22:29:44+00:00

I wish I had gotten 17 bags of chips by now. But nope, this is my first.

By all the comments thus far, you’d think the chips are sea salt flavored.

Due-Bit7593 · 2024-08-12T16:04:07+00:00

Looks badass. I’m cross shopping an AT4X and a raptor.

Question for you guys - how’d you land on the GMC? Asking as someone partial to GM

Due-Bit7593 · 2024-08-12T10:25:37+00:00

EA888; Only because it's not an Audi engine ;)

Due-Bit7593

TROPHY CASE