---
title: Service Portal vs Workspace
description: Understand the similarities and differences between a Service Portal and a Workspace on the ServiceNow AI Platform.
locale: en-US
canonical_url: https://www.servicenow.com/docs/r/australia/application-development/dev-get-start-service-portal-vs-workspace.html
release: australia
topic_type: concept
last_updated: "2026-03-12"
reading_time_minutes: 1
breadcrumb: [User interface and experiences, Standard app development, Getting Started guide for developers, Building applications]
---

# Service Portal vs Workspace

Understand the similarities and differences between a Service Portal and a Workspace on the ServiceNow AI Platform.

## When to choose which

-   Use Service Portal for enterprise self‑service front doors, such as an employee center or customer portal.
-   Use a Workspace when you need a single location for agents and fulfillers to triage, collaborate, resolve records, and view analytics.

## Similarities between Service Portal and Workspace

-   Better user experience than classic forms and lists.
-   Configurable without heavy coding.
-   Mobile-friendly.
-   Support responsive layouts.
-   Find catalog items and knowledge with AI search when licensed and configured.

## Differences between Service Portal and Workspace

| |Service Portal|Workspace|
|---|--------------|---------|
|Primary audience|Requesters \(employees, customers, partners\)|Fulfillers or agents handling cases, incidents, and tasks|
|Purpose|Branded self-service site for requester browsing, requesting, and approvals|Task-centric workbench for triage, resolution, and collaboration|
|UI Framework|AngularJS-based widgets, pages, themes|Next Experience UI withUI Builder and web components|
|Configuration tools|Service Portal Designer and Branding Editor|UI Builder for pages, variants, components, and declarative actions|
|Base system options|Employee Center portal for user self-service|Configurable workspaces \(for example, Service Operations Workspace and CRM Workspace\)|
|Navigation|Portal menus and topic pages|Unified Navigation with multi-tab sessions|
|Analytics|Portal usage analytics and optional AI Search|Embedded analytics, KPIs, and agent assist features|
|Upgrade path|Migrate to Employee Center for an updated taxonomy|Move from classic Agent Workspace to Configurable Workspaces|

**Parent Topic:**[User interface and experiences](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/application-development/dev-get-start-ui-and-experience.md)