Applitools vs Selenium

Overview

Applitools

Stacks62

Followers163

Votes15

Selenium

Stacks16.2K

Followers12.6K

Votes527

GitHub Stars33.6K

Forks8.6K

Applitools vs Selenium: What are the differences?

Key Differences between Applitools and Selenium

1. Integration and Supported Platforms: Applitools offers seamless integration with various test automation frameworks, allowing users to easily incorporate visual testing into their existing workflows. It supports platforms such as Selenium WebDriver, Appium, and more. On the other hand, Selenium is primarily a web automation tool that supports multiple programming languages and browsers, but does not provide built-in visual testing capabilities like Applitools.

2. Visual Testing Capabilities: Applitools specializes in visual testing, providing advanced features like AI-powered visual validations, automated visual testing across different browsers and devices, and sophisticated comparison algorithms for detecting visual differences in UI elements. Selenium, on the other hand, focuses mainly on functional testing and lacks built-in support for visual validations.

3. Cross-Browser and Cross-Device Testing: Applitools enables users to perform visual testing on multiple browsers and devices simultaneously, ensuring consistent UI rendering across different platforms. It provides automated scaling and testing capabilities on various screen resolutions and operating systems. Selenium also supports cross-browser testing but requires additional configuration and setup to achieve similar capabilities as Applitools.

4. Reporting and Test Management: Applitools offers comprehensive reporting and test management capabilities, allowing users to track and manage their visual tests effectively. It provides detailed visual test results, including screenshots, visual diffs, and logs, as well as seamless integration with popular test management tools. Selenium, on the other hand, provides basic test result reporting but lacks built-in test management features offered by Applitools.

5. Image-Based Testing: Applitools utilizes image-based testing, where it captures screenshots of the application under test and compares them against the baseline images. It can accurately detect visual differences, even in dynamic web applications with changing elements. Selenium, on the other hand, relies on DOM-based testing, which compares the HTML structure and properties of web elements, making it less suitable for comprehensive visual testing.

6. Maintenance and Scalability: Applitools reduces maintenance efforts and enhances scalability by automatically maintaining and updating the baseline images, accommodating UI changes without requiring manual interventions. It also offers parallel testing capabilities, enabling faster test execution and scalability. Selenium requires manual maintenance of test scripts and baseline images, making it more time-consuming and less scalable compared to Applitools.

In summary, Applitools provides seamless integration with various test automation frameworks, advanced visual testing capabilities, extensive cross-browser and cross-device testing, comprehensive reporting and test management features, image-based testing for accurate visual validations, and reduced maintenance efforts and enhanced scalability. Selenium, on the other hand, is primarily a functional testing tool with limited visual testing capabilities and requires manual configuration and maintenance for cross-platform testing.

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Advice on Applitools, Selenium

Shivam

Mar 5, 2020

Needs advice

we are having one web application developed in Reacts.js. in the application, we have only 4 to 5 pages that we need to test. I am having experience in selenium with java. Please suggets which tool I should use. and why ............................ ............................ .............................

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Detailed Comparison

Applitools	Selenium
Applitools delivers the next generation of test automation powered by AI assisted computer vision technology known as Visual AI. Visual AI helps Developers, Test Automation Engineers and QA professionals release high-quality web and mobile	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.
Integration with functional testing tools;Automated visual comparisons of application pages;Validation interface;Share bug reports with team & ticketing systems;SDKs for common languages	-
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 33.6K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 8.6K
Stacks 62	Stacks 16.2K
Followers 163	Followers 12.6K
Votes 15	Votes 527
Pros & Cons
Pros 3 Visual AI is 99.9999% accurate 2 Augments any testing framework - easy to implement 2 Increase test coverage - finds functional & visual bugs 2 AI & ML eliminate false positives (vs. pixel-based)) 2 Test against multiple browsers, viewports, and devices Cons 2 Ambiguous 2 Colours with small contrast diff are not identified 2 Mismatched image test results 2 Cannot do well with low res images 2 Documentation not clear	Pros 177 Automates browsers 154 Testing 101 Essential tool for running test automation 24 Record-Playback 24 Remote Control Cons 8 Flaky tests 4 Slow as needs to make browser (even with no gui) 2 Update browser drivers
Integrations
GitHub CircleCI Slack Jenkins OpenCV Cypress Travis CI Azure DevOps Jira React Storybook	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Applitools, Selenium?

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.

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.

LambdaTest

LambdaTest platform provides secure, scalable and insightful test orchestration for website, and mobile app testing. Customers at different points in their DevOps lifecycle can leverage Automation and/or Manual testing on LambdaTest.

Karma

Karma is not a testing framework, nor an assertion library. Karma just launches a HTTP server, and generates the test runner HTML file you probably already know from your favourite testing framework. So for testing purposes you can use pretty much anything you like.

Playwright

It is a Node library to automate the Chromium, WebKit and Firefox browsers with a single API. It enables cross-browser web automation that is ever-green, capable, reliable and fast.

Rainforest QA

Rainforest gives you the reliability of a QA team and the speed of automation, without the hassle of managing a team or the pain of writing automated tests.

WebdriverIO

WebdriverIO lets you control a browser or a mobile application with just a few lines of code. Your test code will look simple, concise and easy to read.

Percy

Catch visual bugs in static & dynamic UI components with Percy. Ensure your website’s UI reliability in dynamic environments. Detect and resolve bugs at speed for each component across browsers and viewports.

TestingBot

TestingBot provides automated and Manual cross browser testing in the cloud. Make sure your website looks ok in all browsers.

Ghost Inspector

It lets you create and manage UI tests that check specific functionality in your website or application. We execute these automated browser tests continuously from the cloud and alert you if anything breaks.

Related Comparisons

Applitools vs Selenium: What are the differences?

Key Differences between Applitools and Selenium

Applitools vs Selenium

Overview

Applitools vs Selenium: What are the differences?