Robin vs Otto: comparing two very different approaches to enterprise AI

Robin by Atera and ServiceNow’s Otto take different approaches to enterprise AI: while Robin resolves technical issues directly on the device or in the identity system, Otto orchestrates requests across departments and then resolves them.

If you’re a CIO or VP of IT choosing an AI agent for your IT operations, this Robin vs ServiceNow AI (Otto) comparison can help.

The AI layer, not the old ITSM debate

This article is entirely AI vs. AI (Robin vs ServiceNow Otto). We’ll look at how the two platforms’ AI technologies differ, the actual use cases, and where each one genuinely has an advantage.

For a full platform comparison, see the Atera vs. ServiceNow article.

What is ServiceNow Otto?

ServiceNow Otto is ServiceNow’s unified AI experience that serves as one “front door” for employees, customers, and support teams to ask for what they need in plain language.

Otto then routes requests to the right specialized agent or workflow, and executes them.

Where Otto came from

At Knowledge 2026, ServiceNow announced it was merging three of its AI products, Now Assist, the Moveworks AI platform it had acquired, and its existing AI Experience layer, into one product.

This turned into ServiceNow Otto. Instead of being built for IT specifically, Otto spans across IT, HR, CRM, security, and other departments.

What Otto actually does

Otto aims to solve a common problem organizations face: AI that can answer questions but can’t execute actual fixes, leaving employees to route their own requests and chase approvals.

Otto has four capabilities that make this possible:

• Conversational AI: Otto’s conversational AI lets you submit any request in plain language. Otto understands the intent and resolves it across departments.
• Enterprise search: Otto pulls answers from your internal docs, wikis, databases, shared drives, and delivers personalized answers based on who’s asking.
• AI voice agents: Otto handles natural conversations in multiple languages, without the usual hold times.
• AI Data Explorer: Anyone can ask a plain-language question about company data and get a clear answer back.

Governed by AI Control Tower

Every action ServiceNow Otto AI takes is governed by ServiceNow’s AI Control Tower, which logs each AI interaction.

This gives IT teams a clear record of what Otto did, when, and why, which is helpful for audits and troubleshooting.

What is Robin by Atera?

Robin is an autonomous IT agent that remediates Tier-1 and complex Tier-2 technical incidents end to end by taking real actions on devices, servers, mainframes, and networks, without needing a technician in the loop.

How Robin works

Robin delivers enterprise-grade IT support by solving device and cloud issues end to end.

This is the four-step process it follows:

1. Robin diagnoses the issue: Robin interacts with end-users via Teams, Slack, email, the Customer Portal, and third-party ITSM tools. It responds to issues immediately, detects the intent, and asks follow-up questions to get the full context for AI incident resolution.
2. It remediates the issue: Robin takes the approved action directly on the device, network, or in the cloud: onboarding a new employee, resetting a password, diagnosing slow performance, and more.
3. It verifies it’s resolved: Robin verifies the issue is actually resolved before closing anything. If further troubleshooting is needed, it escalates the ticket to a technician, with full context of the issue.
4. It closes the loop: Robin closes the loop in your existing ITSM by updating the ticket with the resolution outcome and next steps. Every request, action, approval, and outcome gets recorded for governance and compliance.

Robin works alongside your existing platforms, including ITSM platforms like ServiceNow and Salesforce. Robin works wherever your IT already lives in.

Robin in action: the tasks it resolves

You can read about all Robin use cases here; below are six highlighted.

1. Password reset and credential recovery

   The issue: A user is locked out of their account after multiple login attempts.

   Robin resolution: Robin detects whether the user is in-office or on VPN, selects the correct reset path for that context, and resets the credential directly against the identity provider. Nothing gets routed elsewhere for another system or person to finish.

2. Installing/updating software for employees

   The issue: An employee needs an application they don’t have permission to install themselves.

   Robin resolution: Robin checks their entitlements against the approved software list, then installs the app directly on the device.

3. Diagnosing and resolving slow device performance

   The issue: A user reports their device has become slow.

   Robin resolution: Robin analyzes device health in real time, finds out the actual bottleneck on that machine, and executes the fix directly on the device. No ticket gets opened for someone else to investigate later.

4. Clearing disk space and reclaiming storage

   The issue: A user’s device is running low on storage space.

   Robin resolution: Robin identifies what’s consuming the space, flags what’s safe to remove, and reclaims the storage on the device itself once the user confirms. The fix happens on that machine, not in a separate cleanup workflow.

5. Wi-Fi and network self-service

   The issue: A user can’t connect to the network.

   Robin resolution: Robin isolates whether the fault sits with the device, the adapter, DNS, or a proxy, then resets or repairs that exact point itself. Nothing gets escalated to a general network ticket.

6. Onboarding a new employee

The issue: A new hire needs accounts and software set up.

Robin resolution: Robin validates the employee’s Active Directory groups, approved software, and VPN access against their role, then provisions each one directly. No checklist gets handed to IT to work through manually.

Guardrails and enterprise trust

Autonomous IT makes sense only when it’s governed.

Atera’s AI security ensures that its agentic AI for IT is developed in a secure and trustworthy way:

• Admin-defined guardrails. Robin’s behavior is governed by custom instructions, KB articles, and playbooks written by IT admins in plain language. Anything outside that defined scope gets handed to a person instead of being attempted.
• Human-approved execution. Before any high-risk script or code is activated, a technician must review and explicitly enable it. Admins decide who approves and when a request escalates further.
• Full audit trails. Every action is attributed to a distinct Robin ID, capturing the original request, Robin’s reasoning, and the action taken. This is the same record-keeping a human technician’s actions would get. Logs can be pulled manually, through the API, or sent directly into a SOC’s SIEM platform.
• ITSM agnostic. Robin operates inside whatever platform an organization already runs, including ServiceNow and ServiceNow alternatives like Atlassian and Salesforce, rather than requiring a switch.

Robin vs Otto: the core difference

Now that we’ve looked at both Otto and Robin, let’s see how they compare across key dimensions.

Why Robin has the edge

Robin has been resolving IT incidents in production for a year longer than Otto has existed.

Robin’s underlying technology launched as IT Autopilot in May 2025, autonomously resolving Tier-1 tickets end to end without a technician in the loop. Otto was announced a full year later at the ServiceNow Knowledge event in May 2026.

The two products’ execution claims also carry different weight.

Robin’s up to 92% autonomous resolution rate and 120-second average resolution time are Atera’s own published, named metrics.

ServiceNow’s “99% faster” figure is self-reported, measuring Otto’s internal deployment against its own prior human-only baseline rather than an external or audited benchmark, and is not the same population as Robin’s metric.

Both companies report their own numbers, but only one set is tied to a measured resolution rate of incidents.

Why the core difference distinction matters

“System of action versus system of record” is what separates Robin and Otto.

Robin resolves technical issues directly on the device or the identity system, while Otto resolves them by orchestrating the right specialized agents and workflows across the enterprise.

That gap determines how fast an organization actually gets back to work. Here’s what it looks like in practice for IT leaders:

1. The math compounds at scale. Industry benchmarks put the cost of solving a ticket manually at 63 minutes of active technician work (Endsight 2024 data), and 21.96 hours of average full lifecycle time from ticket opened to resolved (Freshworks 2025 data). With Robin’s up to 92% autonomous resolution rate at a 120-second average resolution time, that math adds up very differently at enterprise ticket volumes.
2. Every unresolved ticket is also an interrupted employee. A ticket sitting in a normal or AI service desk system isn’t only an IT backlog problem. It’s a salesperson locked out of their laptop, a new hire waiting on software access, or a team that can’t join a call. The cost of a slow resolution extends past IT to whoever is stuck waiting on it.
3. Orchestration and remediation solve different problems. Deciding where a request should go and actually completing the technical fix are two different jobs. Otto’s strength is coordinating the right specialized agent or workflow and then resolving the issue, while Robin reaches directly into the device or identity system and closes the issue.

The bottom line

Robin has been resolving IT incidents in production since May 2025, a year before Otto existed, and it does so with a named, measured resolution rate rather than a self-reported internal comparison.

Robin, a ServiceNow Otto alternative, backs its track record with an independent signal too: 15 G2 Summer 2026 category wins, ahead of ServiceNow among others.

Otto is a newer bet on conversational orchestration, built to route and complete requests across IT, HR, CRM, and more.

See how Robin can autonomously resolve your first tickets – book a demo with our sales team today or sign up for Atera’s free trial.