StackShareStackShare
Follow on
StackShare

Discover and share technology stacks from companies around the world.

Follow on

© 2025 StackShare. All rights reserved.

Product

  • Stacks
  • Tools
  • Feed

Company

  • About
  • Contact

Legal

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Service
  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Testing Frameworks
  4. Testing Frameworks
  5. Capybara vs TestCafe

Capybara vs TestCafe

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Capybara
Capybara
Stacks858
Followers191
Votes15
TestCafe
TestCafe
Stacks262
Followers273
Votes26
GitHub Stars9.9K
Forks678

Capybara vs TestCafe: What are the differences?

Developers describe Capybara as "Acceptance test framework for web applications". Capybara helps you test web applications by simulating how a real user would interact with your app. It is agnostic about the driver running your tests and comes with Rack::Test and Selenium support built in. WebKit is supported through an external gem. On the other hand, TestCafe is detailed as "A Node.js tool to automate end-to-end web testing". It is a pure node.js end-to-end solution for testing web apps. It takes care of all the stages: starting browsers, running tests, gathering test results and generating reports.

Capybara and TestCafe can be primarily classified as "Testing Frameworks" tools.

Some of the features offered by Capybara are:

  • No setup necessary for Rails and Rack application. Works out of the box.
  • Intuitive API which mimics the language an actual user would use.
  • Switch the backend your tests run against from fast headless mode to an actual browser with no changes to your tests.

On the other hand, TestCafe provides the following key features:

  • Functional Testing
  • end-to-end testing
  • e2e

Capybara and TestCafe are both open source tools. Capybara with 8.87K GitHub stars and 1.3K forks on GitHub appears to be more popular than TestCafe with 7.24K GitHub stars and 438 GitHub forks.

Indiegogo, GrowthHackers, and sQuidd.io are some of the popular companies that use Capybara, whereas TestCafe is used by Immowelt Group, DevExpress Reimagined, and Whoz. Capybara has a broader approval, being mentioned in 52 company stacks & 95 developers stacks; compared to TestCafe, which is listed in 7 company stacks and 6 developer stacks.

Share your Stack

Help developers discover the tools you use. Get visibility for your team's tech choices and contribute to the community's knowledge.

View Docs
CLI (Node.js)
or
Manual

Detailed Comparison

Capybara
Capybara
TestCafe
TestCafe

Capybara helps you test web applications by simulating how a real user would interact with your app. It is agnostic about the driver running your tests and comes with Rack::Test and Selenium support built in. WebKit is supported through an external gem.

It is a pure node.js end-to-end solution for testing web apps. It takes care of all the stages: starting browsers, running tests, gathering test results and generating reports.

No setup necessary for Rails and Rack application. Works out of the box.;Intuitive API which mimics the language an actual user would use.;Switch the backend your tests run against from fast headless mode to an actual browser with no changes to your tests.;Powerful synchronization features mean you never have to manually wait for asynchronous processes to complete.
Create stable tests (and no manual timeouts); Write in latest JS or TypeScript; Detect JS errors in your code; Launch concurrent tests; Build readable tests with PageObject; Include tests in continuous integration system; Rapid test development
Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
9.9K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
678
Stacks
858
Stacks
262
Followers
191
Followers
273
Votes
15
Votes
26
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 12
    Best acceptance test framework for Ruby on Rails apps
  • 2
    Synchronous with Rack::Test
  • 1
    Fast with Rack::Test
Cons
  • 1
    Hard to make reproducible tests when using with browser
Pros
  • 8
    Cross-browser testing
  • 4
    Built in waits
  • 4
    Open source
  • 4
    Easy setup/installation
  • 3
    UI End to End testing
Cons
  • 9
    No longer free
Integrations
Rails
Rails
TypeScript
TypeScript
JavaScript
JavaScript
Jenkins
Jenkins
Travis CI
Travis CI
TeamCity
TeamCity

What are some alternatives to Capybara, TestCafe?

Robot Framework

Robot Framework

It is a generic test automation framework for acceptance testing and acceptance test-driven development. It has easy-to-use tabular test data syntax and it utilizes the keyword-driven testing approach. Its testing capabilities can be extended by test libraries implemented either with Python or Java, and users can create new higher-level keywords from existing ones using the same syntax that is used for creating test cases.

Karate DSL

Karate DSL

Combines API test-automation, mocks and performance-testing into a single, unified framework. The BDD syntax popularized by Cucumber is language-neutral, and easy for even non-programmers. Besides powerful JSON & XML assertions, you can run tests in parallel for speed - which is critical for HTTP API testing.

Cucumber

Cucumber

Cucumber is a tool that supports Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD) - a software development process that aims to enhance software quality and reduce maintenance costs.

Spock Framework

Spock Framework

It is a testing and specification framework for Java and Groovy applications. What makes it stand out from the crowd is its beautiful and highly expressive specification language. It is compatible with most IDEs, build tools, and continuous integration servers.

Selenide

Selenide

It is a library for writing concise, readable, boilerplate-free tests in Java using Selenium WebDriver.

PHPUnit

PHPUnit

PHPUnit is a programmer-oriented testing framework for PHP. It is an instance of the xUnit architecture for unit testing frameworks.

Detox

Detox

High velocity native mobile development requires us to adopt continuous integration workflows, which means our reliance on manual QA has to drop significantly. It tests your mobile app while it's running in a real device/simulator, interacting with it just like a real user.

Imagium

Imagium

Imagium provides AI based visual testing solution for various forms of testing. It makes the job easier for QA Automation, Mobile Testers, DevOps and Compliance teams. Imagium is easy to integrate with any programing language

Codeception

Codeception

Full-stack testing framework for PHP. Run browsers tests, framework tests, APIs tests, unit tests with ease.

react-testing-library

react-testing-library

It is a simple and complete React DOM testing utility that encourage good testing practices. It provides light utility functions on top of react-dom and react-dom/test-utils, in a way that encourages better testing practices.

Related Comparisons

GitHub
Bitbucket

Bitbucket vs GitHub vs GitLab

GitHub
Bitbucket

AWS CodeCommit vs Bitbucket vs GitHub

Kubernetes
Rancher

Docker Swarm vs Kubernetes vs Rancher

gulp
Grunt

Grunt vs Webpack vs gulp

Graphite
Kibana

Grafana vs Graphite vs Kibana