There are plenty of FOIA requests where the responder simply has to do a quick search of digital internal records that already exist but aren't "public" in the same way that PACER records aren't "public" because they're behind a paywall. Further, it's no longer the case that "most" such requests require human intervention such as "perform[img] manual searches on non-digitized or poorly indexed data," though it is true someone needs to check for redactions. Think of the average case being like the high touch PACER option: someone takes your FOIA request, performs an internal digital search, checks to make sure results look good, and emails them to you.

I'd say in this way they're relatively analogous, though you're partially correct in pointing out some of the differences.