Agentforce vs Shortwave: 2026 comparison
Salesforce's platform for building and deploying AI agents inside your Salesforce instance.
AI email client — natural-language search, summary, scheduled send, and AI-drafted replies grounded in your inbox.
Agentforce vs Shortwave — specs
| Spec | Agentforce | Shortwave |
|---|---|---|
| Agent Rank | 78 / 100 (A) | 72 / 100 (A) |
| Autonomy | Autonomous | Assistant |
| Pricing | Pay per task · from $2 | Freemium · from $9 |
| Open source | No | No |
| Capabilities | Tool use, RAG, Memory | RAG, Memory, Tool use |
| Integrations | 3 apps | 3 apps |
| Verified | Verified | Verified |
| Released | Mar 2025 | Feb 2025 |
Agent Rank breakdown
- Autonomy fit
- 9
- Capabilities
- 6
- Integrations
- 6
- Pricing value
- 8
- Polish & maturity
- 8
- Verifiability
- 10
Auto-computed from autonomy, capabilities, integrations, pricing, maturity and editorial verification. Updated every deploy. How is this computed?
- Autonomy fit
- 7
- Capabilities
- 6
- Integrations
- 6
- Pricing value
- 8
- Polish & maturity
- 6
- Verifiability
- 10
Auto-computed from autonomy, capabilities, integrations, pricing, maturity and editorial verification. Updated every deploy. How is this computed?
Pros & cons
- +Native Salesforce integration — zero data movement
- +Outcome-based pricing aligns with deflection ROI
- +Inherits Salesforce security, audit, and compliance posture
- −Only valuable if you already run on Salesforce
- −Per-conversation pricing can balloon at scale
- −Agent quality varies by use case — best on well-defined service tasks
- +Best AI-native email client in 2026 — search, summarize, draft all natural-language
- +Built specifically for Gmail; faster + smarter than Gmail itself
- +Cheap relative to Superhuman with better AI features
- −Gmail-only — no Outlook support
- −AI assistant is helpful but not yet revolutionary
- −Smaller user base means fewer integrations than Gmail/Outlook ecosystems
Pricing
- +$2 per conversation resolved
- +Foundation AI Cloud included
- +No separate per-seat cost
- +Volume pricing
- +Agentforce Service + Sales + Custom
- +Data Cloud included
- +Dedicated success engineer
- +Basic AI summary
- +90-day search
- +Unlimited search
- +AI assistant
- +Scheduled send
- +Shared inboxes
- +Send delegation
- +Admin controls
Which one should you pick?
Pick Agentforce if cost is the main constraint or if you want the highest autonomy and the verification loop is in place.
Try Agentforce →Pick Shortwave if its specific capabilities (RAG, Memory) match what you need.
Try Shortwave →Affiliate links. We may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
Frequently asked
Should I pick Agentforce or Shortwave in 2026?+
Pick Agentforce if cost is the main constraint or if you want the highest autonomy and the verification loop is in place. Pick Shortwave if its specific capabilities (RAG, Memory) match what you need. Most working teams running both can use Agentforce for primary work and Shortwave for the workflows where its specific strengths matter.
What's the price difference between Agentforce and Shortwave?+
Agentforce starts at Pay per task · from $2; Shortwave starts at Freemium · from $9. Agentforce is the cheaper entry option. For team deployments the TCO can differ — use the AI Agent Rank TCO calculator for your specific volume.
Which is more autonomous, Agentforce or Shortwave?+
Agentforce is the more autonomous of the two (Autonomous vs Assistant). Higher autonomy ships throughput faster but requires verification loops in place — see our autonomous-vs-copilot framing for when each tier wins.