Can Power Automate Desktop and cloud flows work together?

Yes, and this is a common and powerful pattern. A cloud flow can trigger a desktop flow to run on a specific machine, for example when a new file arrives in SharePoint, a cloud flow can kick off a desktop flow that opens a legacy accounting application and enters the data. This combines the cloud flow's easy triggering and connectivity with the desktop flow's ability to control an application with no API.

Does Power Automate Desktop require a machine to always be on?

Yes, for unattended automation, the Windows machine running the desktop flow needs to be powered on, logged in or configured for unattended sign-in, and have Power Automate Desktop installed and connected to the cloud service. Attended flows, which run while a user is actively working, only need the machine on and the user present to trigger them manually.

Is Power Automate Desktop the same as RPA?

Power Automate Desktop is Microsoft's RPA (robotic process automation) product. It falls into the same category as tools like UiPath or Automation Anywhere: software that automates by interacting with the user interface of applications the same way a human would, rather than through an API. This makes it valuable specifically for automating older software that was never built with integration in mind.

Which is cheaper, Desktop flows or cloud flows?

Power Automate Desktop is included at no extra cost for attended automation on a Windows 10 or 11 machine. Unattended desktop automation and cloud flows both typically require a Power Automate licence, priced per user or per flow depending on the plan. For an accurate comparison, the more relevant question is usually which licensing tier covers your specific combination of desktop and cloud flow needs, since Microsoft bundles these differently across its plans.

Power Automate Desktop vs Cloud Flows: What's the Difference?

Power Automate Desktop automates actions on a local Windows machine, such as clicking through legacy software, while cloud flows run in Microsoft's cloud and connect apps and services over the internet.

The name suggests these are two flavours of the same thing, but Power Automate Desktop and cloud flows solve genuinely different problems and often end up working side by side rather than as alternatives to each other.

Cloud flows: connecting apps over the internet

A cloud flow lives entirely in Microsoft’s cloud and is built around triggers and connectors: a new email arrives, a new row appears in a SharePoint list, a webhook fires from an external system. From there, the flow calls a sequence of actions, each one a connector to another cloud service, such as creating a Teams message, updating a Dataverse record, or posting to an external API. Cloud flows require no machine of your own to be running; Microsoft’s servers execute the flow whenever the trigger fires, which is why they are the default choice whenever every system you need to touch already has an API or a supported connector.

Desktop flows: controlling applications the way a human would

Power Automate Desktop takes a completely different approach: instead of calling an API, it drives an application’s actual user interface. It can open a program, click specific buttons, type into fields, read values off the screen, and navigate menus, exactly as a person sitting at the keyboard would. This matters because a large amount of real business software, particularly older ERP systems, legacy accounting tools, or niche industry applications, was never built with an API at all. For those systems, a desktop flow is often the only automatable path.

Attended vs unattended desktop automation

Desktop flows come in two operating modes. Attended flows run on a machine while a person is logged in and actively working, typically triggered manually or from within another application, useful for assisting a person through a repetitive task rather than fully replacing them. Unattended flows run on a dedicated machine without anyone present, triggered automatically, usually from a cloud flow or a schedule, and are the mode used for genuinely hands-off automation such as processing files overnight.

Combining both: the pattern that actually gets used most

In practice, the most valuable Power Automate setups use cloud flows and desktop flows together. A cloud flow detects that a new invoice PDF landed in a SharePoint folder, extracts some metadata, and then triggers a desktop flow running on a specific machine to open the legacy accounting package and enter the invoice, because that accounting package has no API of its own. The cloud flow handles triggering, sequencing, and connectivity to modern services; the desktop flow handles the one piece that requires simulating a human at a keyboard. This split is itself a small example of orchestration, tying two different automation mechanisms into one coherent process; see our article on what orchestration is in automation for the broader pattern.

Reliability and error handling differ between the two

Cloud flows generally fail more gracefully: a connector either succeeds or returns a clear error you can catch and handle. Desktop flows are more fragile by nature, since they depend on the exact screen layout, window titles, and timing of the target application; a software update that moves a button can silently break a desktop flow that worked fine for months. If you rely on desktop automation for anything business-critical, build in explicit waits, error handling, and screenshots on failure so you can diagnose issues quickly; our article on error handling in Power Automate covers the concrete techniques.

Our tip: Before building a desktop flow, spend five minutes checking whether the target application actually has an API or an existing Power Automate connector you missed. Desktop automation is powerful but more fragile than a connector-based flow, so it should be your fallback, not your default.