Agentic Index
Cresta vs Forethought (2026)
Both automate support and they place the logic differently, at 11 and 8 of 14.
Cresta unifies autonomous agents, real time human assist and conversation intelligence for large contact centres. Forethought runs Solve, Triage, Assist and Discover agents resolving tickets end to end using Autoflows, which express business logic in natural language rather than decision trees. Autoflows are the interesting idea here: decision trees are what made previous generations of support automation brittle, and describing the logic in language is a genuinely different bet.
Choose Cresta if
- Documented coverage is materially broader and your contact centre stays staffed.
- Real time human assist during live conversations is the capability you need.
- Conversation intelligence across the whole floor is the visibility you want.
Choose Forethought if
- Decision trees are what broke your last automation attempt, and Autoflows avoid them.
- Ticket resolution end to end, not agent assist, is the outcome.
- Triage and discovery alongside resolution covers more of your workflow.
| At a glance | Cresta | Forethought |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Customer support agent | Customer support agent |
| Entry price | Contact for pricing | Custom annual contract (contact for pricing) |
| Free / trial | — | — |
| Pricing confidence | contact only | contact only |
| Feature | C Cresta |
F Forethought |
|---|---|---|
| Action & orchestration | ||
|
Integrations & Tool Calling Ability to connect agents to real systems through native integrations, OAuth-authenticated actions, custom tools, APIs, webhooks, or MCP-compatible tools. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Workflow Orchestration Ability to sequence, branch, retry, route, and combine deterministic workflow nodes with autonomous agent steps. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Triggers & Channel Coverage How agents wake up and where they work: schedules, webhooks, message events, CRM events, inbox events, chat, email, voice, and collaboration tools. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
| Knowledge & context | ||
|
Knowledge Grounding & RAG Ability to ground agent behavior in company data through document ingestion, retrieval, external knowledge APIs, semantic search, or RAG layers. |
Full / Explicit | Partial |
|
Memory & State Persistence Ability to persist context across a run, conversation, workflow, user, team, or longer-term memory layer. |
Full / Explicit | No / Not documented |
| Control & trust | ||
|
Human Oversight & Guardrails Approval steps, consent checkpoints, escalation rules, structured guardrails, policy constraints, and pause/resume controls. |
Full / Explicit | Partial |
|
Security, Identity & Governance RBAC, SSO, auditability, encryption, least-privilege tool access, compliance posture, and data handling policy. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Observability & Auditability Traces, logs, execution histories, metrics, audit events, and debugging detail for production agent behavior. |
Full / Explicit | Partial |
|
Deployment & Data Residency Deployment modes and options, including SaaS, dedicated cloud, VPC, on-prem, hybrid, local runtime, and self-hosting. |
Partial | Partial |
| Solution readiness | ||
|
Prebuilt Agents, Templates & Packs Ready-made workflows, packaged employees, templates, blueprints, industry solutions, and role-specific agents that reduce time-to-value. |
Partial | Partial |
| Platform extensibility | ||
|
Model Flexibility & Routing Ability to work across multiple foundation models, route tasks to different models, or let buyers bring their own providers and keys. |
No / Not documented | No / Not documented |
|
APIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility Composability layer: stable APIs, SDKs, MCP tool consumption/serving, custom tools, and integration into internal systems. |
Partial | Partial |
|
Testing, Debugging & Optimization Testing, debugging, scoring, retries, fallbacks, quality gates, and optimization loops for improving agent workflows before and after deployment. |
Full / Explicit | Partial |
| Specialist automation | ||
|
Browser & Computer Use Browser, desktop, or remote/local computer control for workflows that cannot be handled through stable APIs alone. |
Partial | Partial |
Pricing snapshot
Sourced from the Index pricing dataset · open each vendor's profile for full detail.
| Pricing | C Cresta |
F Forethought |
|---|---|---|
|
Entry price Lowest public entry point |
Contact for pricing | Custom annual contract (contact for pricing) |
|
Pricing confidence How public the numbers are |
Contact only | Contact only |
|
Billing Primary billing axis |
— | — |
|
Variable cost Workload / overage exposure |
Medium variable cost | Medium variable cost |
|
Free tier / trial Try before you buy |
No free tier
|
No free tier
|
|
Buying motion Self-serve vs sales call |
— | — |