Celonis vs SAP Signavio vs UiPath Process Mining: Real Process Mining Cost in 2026
The short answer: process mining is one of the least transparent software categories to budget. None of the three vendors publishes a price list, and the only public price anchor in the category belongs to a fourth product (Microsoft's $5,000 per tenant per month add-on). What can be said with evidence: Celonis buyers have reported annual figures from $15,000 to "$200,000 and more"; Signavio is described as cheaper inside an existing SAP estate; and UiPath prices mining as consumption on its platform. The right way to budget is with a formula, not a quote you received in the first meeting.
What was public
| Vendor | Pricing model | What was reported | Label |
|---|---|---|---|
| Celonis | Per user and per gigabyte, sales-quoted | User-reported figures on one thread ranged from $15,000 to "$200,000 and more" per year; described as the most expensive tool in the category; a free plan exists for entry | REPORTED |
| SAP Signavio | Per-user and record blocks, sales-quoted | Fastest path to mining on SAP systems; cheaper inside an SAP estate and negotiable inside existing SAP agreements | REPORTED |
| UiPath Process Mining | Platform Units (consumption) | Engagements described as enterprise pilots scoped to a defined process area; no public price | QUOTE-ONLY / UNKNOWN |
| Microsoft Power Automate Process Mining (reference) | $5,000 per tenant per month add-on including 100 GB of process mining storage; Premium licenses at $15 per user per month | The only published price in the category | REPORTED |
For all three named vendors the list price, the price per event or gigabyte, the price per connector and the price per process were QUOTE-ONLY / UNKNOWN. Pricing opacity is itself a cost: without a rate card, the only benchmark you have is another buyer's contract.
The cost formula
Year-one cost = platform license + data ingestion and connectors + implementation + consulting + internal analyst time + automation integration
Only the first term is quoted up front. Vendors differ in what triggers it:
- Celonis: users and data volume (gigabytes ingested), so every viewer and every new data source raises the bill.
- Signavio: users and record blocks, with the SAP data connection cheapest and other systems more effort.
- UiPath: Platform Units, shared with the RPA robots and AI agents that act on the findings, so mining and automation draw from one budget.
Three scenarios
The scenarios are ILLUSTRATIVE and define scope, not price.
| Scenario | Processes | Source systems | Users | Event volume |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small | 1 (e.g., order-to-cash) | 1 | 5 | millions of events |
| Mid-market | 5 | 3 | 25 | on the order of 100 million events |
| Enterprise | 20 or more | 8 or more | 150 | a billion events or more |
Small. A team with one process and one ERP can start on a free plan or the lowest reported figure (about $15,000 a year on the Celonis thread). On SAP, Signavio's connection speed and existing agreement leverage matter most. On UiPath, a scoped pilot is the likely entry.
Mid-market. The reported Celonis range spans an order of magnitude at this scale. Cost per process is the useful normalizer: annual license ÷ processes covered. Using the Microsoft reference add-on as an anchor, $60,000 a year across five processes is $12,000 per process, but only if the data fits within 100 GB.
Enterprise. At 20 or more processes and a billion events, every vendor here moves to negotiated enterprise terms. The reported Celonis ceiling of "$200,000 and more" is a lower bound for the upper end, not a cap (QUOTE-ONLY / UNKNOWN).
Worked example: how implementation changes the total
The following is a worked example, not a quote. Take a $100,000 annual license and an implementation ratio m (implementation and consulting as a multiple of license):
| Implementation ratio | Implementation cost | Year-one total |
|---|---|---|
| 0.5 | $50,000 | $150,000 |
| 1.0 | $100,000 | $200,000 |
| 2.0 | $200,000 | $300,000 |
The ratio is ILLUSTRATIVE; it depends on how clean the event logs are and how many systems must be connected. Reviewers consistently describe value as depending on clean event logs and real data engineering.
Break-even
Process mining does not produce savings on its own; it identifies them. The break-even is:
Identified opportunity needed = year-one cost ÷ share of the opportunity you actually capture
If year-one cost is $200,000 and you capture 30% of what mining identifies, you need about $667,000 of identified annual opportunity for the project to break even in year one. If you capture only 15%, you need about $1.33 million. This is why pricing that scales with data volume deserves scrutiny: analysis you do not act on is a pure cost.
Sensitivity
1. Data engineering. Where logs are messy, implementation can exceed the license. 2. User count. Per-user licensing grows with every viewer added. 3. Data volume. Per-gigabyte licensing grows with every new data source and with longer history. 4. Automation coupling. UiPath's mining sits in the same consumption pool as its automation, which helps if you will automate and hurts if you only want to analyze. 5. ERP fit. Signavio's advantage weakens outside SAP landscapes.
Budgeting traps
- Free-plan or pilot pricing is not production pricing. A scoped pilot proves the concept, not the data cost.
- Renewals grow. Reviewers reported the renewal quote coming in larger than the previous year.
- Work outside the logs is invisible. Task-level work in browsers and hand-offs needs task mining, which is a separate product line.
- Overlapping suites. Signavio's "Process Intelligence" and "Process Insights" packaging was reported as confusing about which product does what.
What to ask before you buy
Ask each vendor for three numbers in writing: the price per gigabyte or event block, the price per additional user, and the price to add one more source system. Then request a reference customer with a similar process count and ask what the third-year invoice looked like.