OpenAI Frontier is an enterprise platform for building, deploying, and managing AI agents across business systems, like your CRM, data warehouses, and internal tools.
Enterprises have no trouble coming up with ideas for AI agents. But they get stuck scaling them—typically for reasons like messy integration work, data and skills gaps, or trust, governance, and risk concerns. Well, OpenAI just announced something for its enterprise customers running up against those same roadblocks: OpenAI Frontier.
But Frontier isn't right for every team. For starters, you're locked into the OpenAI models. And because it's not accessible to everyone at your company, the speed to value can be a lot lower than other agent builders like Zapier.
Here, I'll share what we know about OpenAI Frontier's capabilities so far—and why Zapier, with its hybrid AI automation model, might make more sense for your business.
Table of contents
Zapier vs. OpenAI Frontier at a glance
Zapier | OpenAI Frontier | |
|---|---|---|
Platform breadth | Complete AI orchestration platform with workflows (Zaps), Agents, Tables, Forms, Chatbots, MCP, and Canvas | Agent-focused platform with execution environment, evaluation loops, and shared business context |
Model flexibility | Fully model agnostic: works with OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, and more (including open source models) | Only works with OpenAI models |
Integrations | More than 8,000 secure, pre-built integrations available immediately | Connects to core enterprise systems (CRM, data warehouses, internal apps); partner agent ecosystem |
Execution reliability | Hybrid (deterministic + AI) workflows run the same way every time; observable, debuggable, with error handling | Probabilistic agent behavior with evaluation and optimization loops to improve performance over time |
Cost | Hybrid execution only uses inference where it actually adds value, keeping token costs low | Fully agentic operation is high token count, high cost |
Governance | SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, CCPA; SSO, SCIM, role-based permissions, audit logs, app restrictions | SOC 2 Type II; ISO 27001–aligned security; enterprise IAM with scoped agent access, monitoring, and auditable actions |
What is OpenAI Frontier?
OpenAI Frontier is designed to close what OpenAI calls the "AI opportunity gap"—the frustrating distance between what AI models can theoretically do and what organizations can actually deploy in practice. It's positioned as an end-to-end platform for building, deploying, and managing AI agents that can do real work across your enterprise systems.
Here's how Frontier works:
Business context layer: Frontier creates a semantic layer that connects your siloed enterprise systems—data warehouses, CRM tools, ticketing systems, and internal apps—so agents can work with the same information your team does. A semantic layer is basically a translator that gives AI agents context, not just access. So when a field updates in your CRM, instead of an agent seeing raw data like "acct_status = 3," it understands "a high-value customer is at risk and needs follow-up." OpenAI describes this as giving agents institutional memory that builds over time.
Agent execution: The platform provides an environment where agents can run code, work with files, and use tools to complete complex tasks. Agents can work in parallel to handle multi-step workflows across different systems.
Evaluation and optimization: Built-in evaluation loops show what's working and what isn't, so agents can improve with experience. This feedback mechanism is designed to help agents consistently do useful work over time.
Enterprise security and governance: Frontier includes identity-based access controls, explicit permissions, comprehensive auditing, and monitoring designed for sensitive and regulated work. You can scope exactly what each agent can access and see detailed logs of every action.
Interfaces and agent types: Frontier supports multiple interfaces—ChatGPT Enterprise, ChatGPT Atlas, and custom business applications—and works with your own agents, OpenAI's agents, and third-party agents from the partner ecosystem.
OpenAI has shared examples of Frontier deployments across industries with complex, regulated workflows:
Energy: Predicting natural disaster impacts and developing mitigations to avoid millions in losses.
Manufacturing: Simulating manufacturing and capacity siting to optimize $1B+ in capital expenditures.
Life sciences: Enhancing global regulatory workflows to support drug approvals.
Banking: Implementing an AI-native back office to scale across hundreds of millions of events per year.
Communications: Accelerating call centers with a global AI service layer.
What are the limitations of OpenAI Frontier?
Here's what to keep in mind about OpenAI Frontier, especially when compared to Zapier.
OpenAI frontier only uses OpenAI models; Zapier is model-agnostic
OpenAI offers its own state-of-the-art models. They're among the best available, but they're not right for every job. If you want flexibility, you need to use a platform that's model-agnostic.
On Zapier, you can access OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, and other AI models (including open source ones)—you're not locked in and can change models depending on the workflow.
OpenAI is agent-focused; Zapier is a complete AI orchestration platform
Frontier is purpose-built for agent deployment and orchestration. If you need a broader platform that handles traditional automation workflows, data management, custom interfaces, or chatbots alongside agents, you'll need additional tools.Â
Zapier includes all of these capabilities in one platform, so you're not managing multiple vendors or systems.
You can use Zapier's suite of tools to create:
Agents that operate across your tech stack
Forms that capture data and trigger workflows
Tables that store and manage that data
Chatbots that respond to internal or customer inquiries
Zaps that automate workflows behind the scenes
MCP connections to automate your work from your existing AI tools
Canvases that visually map out your workflows
OpenAI is non-deterministic; Zapier has a hybrid AI automation model
With Frontier, you're working within a non-deterministic, inference-only model. That means outputs won't be consistent, and it can be harder to manage a paper trail for compliance-forward workflows.
Zapier's hybrid automation model, on the other hand, means that you can combine AI with deterministic automation, a huge necessity at the enterprise level when you need something you know will perform the same way every time. It also means you'll use and pay for fewer tokens—only pulling in AI when you really need it.
OpenAI is developer-dependent; Zapier empowers citizen automators
Frontier emphasizes deep integration with your "systems of record"—data warehouses, CRMs, and core business applications. While that depth is powerful, it requires significant upfront technical work and ongoing IT involvement to maintain those connections. OpenAI Frontier even requires having OpenAI engineers embedded in your org to help keep things moving.
If you're looking for quick deployment, this could be a barrier. Zapier, on the other hand, has thousands of pre-built integrations, which let you connect apps in minutes without custom development work. A marketing ops team can have lead routing running in a few hours with Zapier, by themselves—no services engagement required.
This means greater speed to value with Zapier, where everyone on your team can build what they need, without the developer bottleneck.
What is Zapier Enterprise?
Zapier Enterprise is also built for large organizations that need to run automation and AI workflows at scale without sacrificing security or control. It includes the full Zapier platform (Agents, Forms, Tables, Chatbots, Zaps, MCP, and Canvas) and is backed by enterprise-grade governance.
With Zapier Enterprise, IT gets centralized control with SOC 2 Type II certification, GDPR and CCPA compliance, SAML SSO, SCIM user provisioning, role-based permissions, and comprehensive audit logs. Meanwhile, teams across the organization can still build and deploy automations without waiting on IT tickets. It's governance that enables rather than blocks.
The platform supports unlimited users and handles high-volume, mission-critical workflows—companies like ActiveCampaign, Hudl, and ServiceTitan run millions of tasks through Zapier each month. Admins get powerful monitoring tools—analytics dashboards, app restrictions, approval workflows—to see exactly what's happening across the organization. And Enterprise customers work with a dedicated Technical Account Manager for optimization and support.
What is Zapier Agents?
Zapier Agents are AI-powered teammates that take real work off your plate by automating multi-step tasks across your tech stack. Think of them as specialized assistants you train with clear instructions, then give access to your business data and the apps they need to get things done.
Unlike basic AI chatbots, Agents can actually do things: process leads, manage support tickets, draft personalized emails, research prospects, and more—all across Zapier's thousands of app integrations. They work autonomously in the background when something happens in your apps (like a new lead or support ticket), or you can interact with them directly when you need something done.
You can spin up a custom Agent in minutes using plain language with Zapier Copilot, monitor what it's doing through the Activity dashboard, and refine its behavior as you go. And if you want to get started even faster, check out our collection of Agent templates.
For example, Slate, a digital publishing platform, wanted to increase lead volume without spending hours chasing down prospects or manually enriching data. So they built a Zapier Agent that pulls in leads from multiple sources, enriches them automatically, and routes high-quality prospects straight to sales.
In one month, that agent helped generate more than 2,000 leads with no additional manual lift. The agent handled the repetitive work in the background, while the marketing team focused on nurturing and conversion.
Learn more: AI agent use cases
Try Zapier Enterprise for accessible, model-agnostic agent building
OpenAI Frontier is powerful, but it requires intense developer support and means locking in to an AI vendor. If you need to deploy AI agents and automation today across your entire tech stack—empowering teams while maintaining enterprise governance—Zapier Enterprise is available now with thousands of integrations, proven reliability, and transparent pricing.
