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Appium vs Sauce Labs: What are the differences?

Introduction

Appium and Sauce Labs are both popular tools used for mobile app testing. While Appium is an open-source framework, Sauce Labs is a cloud-based testing platform. There are several key differences between these two tools that make them unique and suitable for different use cases. Let's explore these differences below.

  1. Support for Different Platforms: Appium supports testing for various platforms, including iOS, Android, and Windows. On the other hand, Sauce Labs supports a wide range of platforms, including mobile devices, desktop browsers, and virtual machines. This makes Sauce Labs a more versatile tool for testing across multiple platforms.

  2. Native vs Web vs Hybrid App Testing: Appium is primarily focused on automating native, web, and hybrid apps. It provides a unified solution for testing all types of apps on different platforms. Whereas, Sauce Labs offers comprehensive testing capabilities for web and mobile applications, including native, web, and hybrid app testing.

  3. Real Device vs Simulator/Emulator Testing: Appium allows testing on both real devices and simulators/emulators. It offers a bridge between the test code and the device, making it possible to interact directly with the app on a real device or a simulator. In contrast, Sauce Labs provides a cloud-based infrastructure that allows testing on thousands of real devices and simulators/emulators simultaneously without the need for physical access to the devices.

  4. Testing Infrastructure: Appium requires setting up and managing the test infrastructure locally, which includes configuring devices, simulators, and emulators. Sauce Labs, being a cloud-based platform, eliminates the need for infrastructure setup and management. It provides a centralized and scalable testing infrastructure that can be accessed remotely from anywhere.

  5. Integration with CI/CD Pipelines: Both Appium and Sauce Labs can be seamlessly integrated into Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines. However, Sauce Labs offers built-in integrations with popular CI/CD tools such as Jenkins, Bamboo, and CircleCI, making it easier to incorporate automated testing into existing workflows. Appium, being an open-source tool, requires additional configuration and setup to integrate with CI/CD pipelines.

  6. Reporting and Analytics: Sauce Labs provides comprehensive reporting and analytics capabilities, including detailed test execution reports, logs, and screenshots. It offers real-time insights into test results, performance metrics, and device/browser coverage. Appium, being an open-source tool, relies on the integration of reporting and analytics tools separately to generate test reports and analyze test results.

In summary, Appium is an open-source framework that supports testing for different platforms and app types, but requires local infrastructure setup and separate reporting tools. On the other hand, Sauce Labs is a cloud-based testing platform that offers a versatile testing infrastructure, extensive platform support, built-in CI/CD integrations, and comprehensive reporting and analytics capabilities.

Advice on Appium and Sauce Labs

I am looking to purchase one of these tools for Mobile testing for my team. It should support Native, hybrid, and responsive app testing. It should also feature debugging, parallel execution, automation testing/easy integration with automation testing tools like Selenium, and the capability to provide availability of devices specifically for us to use at any time with good speed of performing all these activities.

I have already used Perfecto mobile, and Sauce Labs in my other projects before. I want to know how different or better is AWS Device farm in usage and how advantageous it would be for us to use it over other mentioned tools

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Replies (3)
Aaron Evans
Testing Strategist at One Shore · | 3 upvotes · 6.6K views

A SaaS offering like Sauce Labs (or BrowserStack or LambdaTest, etc) will provide a remote Selenium/Appium Grid including the ability to run test automation in parallel (up to the amount based your subscription level) an a wide array of browsers and mobile devices.

These tools can be expensive, but if you can afford them, the expertise and effort of maintaining the grid, browser updates, etc. is worth it.

AWS Device Farm can be significantly cheaper, but is much more work to setup and run. It will not give you as many devices, or the reporting and screen/video capture you get with the the services. And there is no support for AWS Device Farm, and very poor documentation. I have used it, but do not recommend it. Running your own grid and physical device lab is better, but I'd stick with a service like Sauce Labs or Perfecto which will save you time and give you better services despite the higher price tag.

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BitBar's Dedicated Devices would be a great option for you. It allows you to dedicate (reserve) devices for your use only which also having access to all of the devices in the shared cloud. BitBar has the features and integrations that you are looking for as well.

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Pros of Appium
Pros of Sauce Labs
  • 12
    Webdriverio support
  • 6
    Java, C#, Python support
  • 3
    Open source
  • 2
    Great GUI with inspector
  • 2
    Active community
  • 1
    Support android test automation
  • 1
    Internal API access
  • 1
    Support iOS test automation
  • 60
    Selenium-compatible
  • 46
    Webdriver compatible
  • 35
    Video recordings of every test
  • 31
    Qa
  • 29
    Mobile support
  • 26
    Any programming language
  • 23
    Developer tools
  • 21
    Test local and firewalled servers
  • 20
    Jenkins integration
  • 18
    Pristine VMs
  • 17
    CI Compatible
  • 11
    Appium support
  • 9
    Parallel testing
  • 8
    Rapid environment preparation
  • 8
    Mobile device support
  • 7
    Easy testing on almost any device
  • 7
    Allows me to Focus more test automation rather than IT
  • 6
    Secure testing and easy setup
  • 5
    Easy setup with CI and fast automated tests
  • 5
    Quick support response
  • 4
    Fast and reliable to host the automated tests
  • 4
    Easy to setup and understand,
  • 3
    Easy setup and integration with Travis Ci
  • 3
    Maintained browser matrix
  • 3
    Easy onboarding, do not need to manager VMs/OS/Browsers
  • 2
    Efficient tool to verify product quality
  • 2
    Teamcity Integration and mobile testing win
  • 2
    Hany for platform testing
  • 2
    Great documentation
  • 2
    Generous free trial
  • 2
    Easy. Straightforward. Scalable
  • 2
    Great way to integrate test suite on cloud
  • 2
    Simplicity of Sauce-connect
  • 1
    Very Good, Quick, flexible Infrastructure Support
  • 1
    It's great for my QA work
  • 1
    Awesome tech support
  • 1
    Having this available for CI servers is fantastic
  • 1
    Amazing service to do cloud cross browser testing
  • 1
    Depth of integrations
  • 1
    Because of its cloud based support for appium
  • 1
    Easy setup, Works great with selenium.
  • 1
    QE support
  • 1
    Manuals are not very well versed for beginners
  • 1
    Secure testing
  • 1
    Cheaper than browserstack
  • 1
    Stable
  • 0
    Simple to set up and integrate so many browser configs

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Cons of Appium
Cons of Sauce Labs
    Be the first to leave a con
    • 2
      Relatively slow
    • 2
      Expensive

    Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

    - No public GitHub repository available -

    What is Appium?

    Appium is an open source test automation framework for use with native, hybrid, and mobile web apps. It drives iOS and Android apps using the WebDriver protocol. Appium is sponsored by Sauce Labs and a thriving community of open source developers.

    What is Sauce Labs?

    Cloud-based automated testing platform enables developers and QEs to perform functional, JavaScript unit, and manual tests with Selenium or Appium on web and mobile apps. Videos and screenshots for easy debugging. Secure and CI-ready.

    Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

    What companies use Appium?
    What companies use Sauce Labs?
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    What tools integrate with Appium?
    What tools integrate with Sauce Labs?

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    What are some alternatives to Appium and Sauce Labs?
    Selendroid
    Selendroid is a test automation framework which drives off the UI of Android native and hybrid applications (apps) and the mobile web. Tests are written using the Selenium 2 client API
    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.
    BrowserStack
    BrowserStack is the leading test platform built for developers & QAs to expand test coverage, scale & optimize testing with cross-browser, real device cloud, accessibility, visual testing, test management, and test observability.
    Selenium
    Selenium automates browsers. That's it! What you do with that power is entirely up to you. Primarily, it is for automating web applications for testing purposes, but is certainly not limited to just that. Boring web-based administration tasks can (and should!) also be automated as well.
    EarlGrey
    EarlGrey is a native iOS UI automation test framework that enables you to write clear, concise tests. With the EarlGrey framework, you have access to enhanced synchronization features. EarlGrey automatically synchronizes with the UI, network requests, and various queues; but still allows you to manually implement customized timings, if needed.
    See all alternatives