Practical guides for companies evaluating AI agents, definitions, real costs, RPA comparisons, GDPR compliance and deployment playbooks, written for decision-makers.
An AI agent is software that plans and executes multi-step tasks in your business systems autonomously. The plain-language guide for decision-makers, what agents are and are not, what they reliably do in 2026, how they work, their limits, and a 5-question readiness check.
AI agents in 2026 range from 100 €/month for packaged SaaS to 250.000 €+ for multi-agent platforms, with most custom builds at 15.000-60.000 €. Real price ranges by complexity, the 2026 model tiers from 1 $ to 10 $ per million tokens, and a worked monthly bill example.
RPA wins on stable, rule-based processes; AI agents win when cases vary and involve unstructured data. The full decision framework, head-to-head comparison, 3-year cost of ownership, the hybrid pattern that combines both, and how to migrate an RPA estate without ripping it out.
European companies can run AI agents in full GDPR compliance, but not by default. The 7-point checklist, legal bases, DPAs, data minimization, retention on memory and traces, erasure that works, human oversight, plus the EU AI Act duties and compliant architecture patterns.
From zero to production in 6-10 weeks with seven steps, baseline metrics, knowledge base preparation, stack selection, tool and escalation design, evaluation suite, shadow-mode pilot and gated rollout. The playbook that gets 40-70% of Tier-1 tickets resolved autonomously.