Top 5 Open Source Automation Testing Tools In 2023 | Detailed Analysis

Open-Source Automation Testing Tools

Open-source tools are mostly preferred by everyone due to the independence they provide. You must already know how important software testing is and have seen the list of overall best automated testing tools used for different forms of software testing (e.g. regression testing, unit testing, integration testing, API testing, functional testing, UI testing, etc.). But, many of those tools do not allow the testers to test the products cross-platform (e.g. Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, etc.) or modify the code as per they want and that’s where you can feel the requirement of open-source automation testing tools.

What Is An Open Source Test Automation Tool?

An open-source test automation tool is a tool that allows you to test different types of tech products such as mobile applications, desktop applications, web apps, etc. at different stages of different formats of tests (e.g. regression testing, functional testing, load testing, etc.). Besides being capable of providing all the features that any popular test automation tool offers, the easy accessibility, and affordability of these open-source tools make them a better choice for everyone.

Benefits of Using An Open Source Test Automation Tool

It is evident that open source testing tools offer significant advantages that make them hold their popularity. Now, let’s take a look at the benefits of using them.

  • They have no charges to use them so you can save a lot of money in steps like deployment, maintenance, and so on.
  • Popular open-source tools have huge communities working to improve them. Hence, remote teams get a lot of support in collaborating on agile methodologies.
  • The communities working for these tools include a lot of developers who always come up with numerous efficient features along with robust security.
  • Amazing features with time-to-time updates make the tools extremely helpful and effective for all testing needs.

Top 5 Open-Source Automation Testing Tools

As you just got to know what an open-source automation testing tool is and why they receive immense love from testers, it’s time to check out the best ones among the numerous options available. Hence, based on various crucial parameters, we have jotted down the 5 best ones below.

1. Selenium

There is hardly any tool that can overtake Selenium to secure the first position as an open-source test automation framework. It has been serving businesses as an efficient automation testing platform for around two decades now. Being a web-based open-source test automation framework, it is often considered an open-source library rather than a tool. And, talking about its popularity, if you ask a bunch of testing professionals, the names that you will surely hear from most of them are Selenium IDE, Selenium WebDriver, Selenium Grid, and the recently released Selenium 4. Now, let’s dive into the features that make it such a renowned tool.

Key Features:

  • Its efficient compatibility with numerous popular browsers like Google Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer as well as Headless browsers makes it a perfect choice for effective cross-browser testing.
  • It allows you to write tests in multiple programming languages such as Python, Java, C#, JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, etc. exempting you from the hassle of using different tools for testing your mobile apps, web applications, and so on. The compatibility with so many scripting languages leads to better handling of dynamic web elements in terms of speed and performance.
  • Selenium IDE’s record and playback feature allow you to re-run the test cases as well as to analyze the test results whenever you want.
  • One of the most useful and effective ways to automate regression tests is using Selenium WebDriver.
  • It has great cross-platform compatibility with popular operating systems such as Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS.
  • Being an open-source tool, Selenium has a huge community of developers, testers, and relevant experts always working to improve the product and service quality. Hence, you always keep on getting amazing features and updates time-to-time.
  • You get to experience an amazing simulator testing environment by using the features like a simulated mouse cursor and keyboard.
  • It allows you to easily import advanced tests scripted on Eclipse, Visual Studio, or NetBeans.
  • You are also capable of using customizable add-ons and plugins for various operating systems and reusability.
  • This tool allows easy integrations with frameworks such as Ant, Maven, TestNG, JUnit, NUnit, etc.

Though these benefits make Selenium a great choice for test automation, its steep learning curve makes businesses spend a lot of time, money, and effort in training testing professionals. That’s why nowadays, reputed companies prefer Preflight as Selenium’s best alternative for creating, running, and managing different forms of tests without getting into even a little bit of hassle for coding. To get more astonished by the advantages of that amazing tool, check out the article “10 Amazing Software Testing Benefits From Preflight In 2022”.

2. Cypress

Cypress is one of the most popular names that somehow make it to the list of names that play a significant role in the developers’ journey named “test-driven development (TDD).” To receive a simple and pleasant end-to-end testing experience, its design principles need you to package and bundle everything together.

Though it comes with a different architecture than Selenium, being capable of only running inside the browser, Cypress cannot overtake Selenium, which offers Selenium WebDriver to be run remotely outside the browser.

Using Cypress provides you with native access to every object without the involvement of things like object serialization or over-the-wire protocols. Pulling your application into Cypress lets you understand everything going on inside and outside the browser. For example, because of being synchronously notified about everything happening inside the browser, you get native access to every distributed object model (DOM) element.

However, Cypress is a great test automation framework but remember that the flaky cypress tests can terribly ruin your overall testing experience. Hence, to avoid such a situation, use it carefully and make the best use of the debugger you get for experiencing more ease in using the developer tools.

Key Features:

  • If you love to use a tool that truly listens to you, Cypress is a great choice. It automatically waits for commands and assertions before moving on with anything (e.g. test execution, etc.).
  • It offers an amazing test status menu feature that lets you know how many tests have passed as well as how many failed.
  • You get to use the awesome viewport sizing feature to run tests on responsive sites (e.g. mobile app testing).
  • The capability to capture screenshots and video of important moments in the test suites lead you to a great test management experience.
  • Test creation and maintenance of test scripts in Cypress are so efficient that it automatically reloads every change made to the test scripts, and you get an awesome continuous testing experience.
  • Command logs and the app preview turn out to be highly effective test reports that show the precise automation actions on the web app during test execution.

3. Appium

To be specific, Appium is an open-source mobile app testing tool but its cool features and the ease of operation it offers, make it one of the most popular open-source test automation tools. It allows the end users to efficiently test all kinds of web, native, and hybrid apps and on top of that, it has an amazing premise that is designed in such a way that you do not need to recompile or modify your app in any way to test it. This tool is popular for not making you bound to run your tests in any specific language or framework. Anyone without any technical knowledge can easily use all its features with just minimal training and support.

Key Features:

  • The tool is extremely simple to set up, does not need any extra installations on the device, and needs very little memory of the tests.
  • It doesn't need you to build any Appium-specific or third-party code or frameworks into the app because it uses vendor-provided automation frameworks beneath the hood so, it allows you to test the final release version of the product going to be available in the marketplace.
  • It enables you to test native apps without SDK by using automation APIs and you can use the same API to test across several platforms.
  • It supports emulators (Android) and simulators (iOS) to automate your tests for different platforms.
  • You can reuse the code across Android, iOS, and Windows test suites.
  • It supports a number of programming languages such as Java, PHP, Objective-C, C#, Clojure, JavaScript with Node.js, Python, Perl, or whichever is supported by Selenium.
  • It allows you to use the Selenium WebDriver that uses the JSON wire protocol.
  • It is based on a client/server model.
  • It supports collaboration between teams, easy tracking of tests, project management, and scales to thousands of steps.

4. Katalon Studio

Katalon Studio is another one of the most popular free tools that are widely used for web testing, mobile app testing, API testing, and desktop (Windows) application testing. It is considered a one-stop solution for diverse forms of software testing along with enabling cross-functional operations for software development teams at scale. As it offers both low-code and scripting methods, it can be used with minimal training. Now, let’s check out the efficient features that built its identity and made it recognized by Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice in 2020.

Key Features:

  • Being a codeless tool, Katalon studio allows anyone regardless of coding knowledge to use it with ease.
  • It fulfills your advanced needs with built-in keywords and project templates.
  • It supports popular programming languages like Java and Groovy.
  • It provides you with flexibility and faster test creation capabilities with record & playback, manual, and script mode.
  • By using this tool, you get a host of seamless integrations with SDLC management, CI/CD pipeline, team collaboration applications, etc.
  • It has effective cross-platform compatibility with operating systems like Windows, macOS, and Linux.
  • It offers faster debugging of the user interface and smart reporting to troubleshoot failed tests.
  • It supports advanced testing methodologies like BDD(Behavior Driven Development), DDT (Data Driven Testing), Keyword-Driven Testing, Cross-Browser Testing (Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Firefox, Safari, and Headless browsers), and Cross-Platform Mobile Testing (iOS, Android).
  • It makes you capable of reusing the test artifacts like test cases, objects, keywords, etc. with the Page Object Model (POM) design and Test Artifact Sharing.
  • Using it enables you to achieve easy integrations with continuous integration & continuous delivery tools such as Jenkins, Bamboo, Azure DevOps, CircleCI, etc. along with ALMs like Jira.
  • It allows you to easily import Selenium, SoapUI, and Postman projects.
  • You can get step-by-step training tools to use studio in real projects on Katalon Academy.

5. QA Wolf

QA wolf is an amazing web-based tool that operates by generating JavaScript code when you are browsing a website and then converting those codes into end-to-end automated tests. That makes it possible to use this tool without learning complex programming languages and beginners can easily use it. However, it also allows the developers to modify any part of the test code making it a suitable tool for technical people too.

Key Features:

  • Being fully hosted, it does not need any extra download or installation to be used.
  • It allows 100 percent parallel testing that leads to receiving test results faster and achieving greater test coverage.
  • It has amazing cross-browser compatibility with popular browsers like Google Chrome, WebKit, Mozilla Firefox, and Chromium.
  • It allows you to perform on-premises operations.
  • Using it allows you to perform integrations with Vercel and Netlify.
  • You can easily connect using OpenVPN.
  • Its automatic code generation and low learning curve demolish the barrier of coding knowledge within your team and allow everyone to take an active part in using it.
  • It provides you with efficient test failure logs and videos so that you can easily figure out the faults.
  • As an open-source tool, its code is easily accessible.

Conclusion

This article gives you a detailed overview of the top 5 open source automation testing tools serving numerous testing teams and businesses for years now. You saw how each one of them exempts you from the hassle of manual testing by offering amazing features like cross-device (e.g. Windows laptop, Mac, Android mobiles, iPhones), cross-platform (e.g. windows, macOS, Android, iOS), cross-browser (e.g. Chrome, Firefox, etc.) compatibility, easy accessibility to crucial web services, easy integration with important CI/CD tools like Github, Jira, Jenkins, etc., and so on. Now, you can analyze the details and figure out the best-suited open-source testing tool for you.

However, as far as absolutely easy codeless test automation is concerned, Preflight is one of the most renowned names out there. You can experience much more than all the features you saw here and even you can imagine. All you have to do is to book a demo and experience it yourself.

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