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BrowserStack vs Karma: What are the differences?
BrowserStack: Instant access to a lab of 1000+ real mobile and desktop browsers for testing. Live, Web-Based Browser Testing Instant access to all real mobile and desktop browsers. Say goodbye to your lab of devices and virtual machines; Karma: Spectacular Test Runner for JavaScript. 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.
BrowserStack and Karma can be categorized as "Browser Testing" tools.
Some of the features offered by BrowserStack are:
- Real Device Cloud. Test on a range of physical Android and iOS mobile devices and tablets for the most accurate results
- 1100+ desktop browsers. Latest versions of IE, Edge, Safari, Chrome, Firefox and more on a range of Windows and OS X platforms on a robust cloud infrastructure
- Test dev environments. Our Local Testing feature allows you to test development and internal websites seamlessly, without setup or configuration
On the other hand, Karma provides the following key features:
- Test on Real Devices
- Remote Control
- Testing Framework Agnostic
"Multiple browsers" is the primary reason why developers consider BrowserStack over the competitors, whereas "Test Runner" was stated as the key factor in picking Karma.
Karma is an open source tool with 10.7K GitHub stars and 1.61K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Karma's open source repository on GitHub.
According to the StackShare community, BrowserStack has a broader approval, being mentioned in 577 company stacks & 238 developers stacks; compared to Karma, which is listed in 119 company stacks and 57 developer stacks.
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
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.
Stability - Just works. Availability - More than 15 datacenters. Enterprise features like SSO, local testing and SOC2/GDPR compliant.
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.
Pros of BrowserStack
- Multiple browsers134
- Ease of use75
- Real browsers64
- Ability to use it locally43
- Good price26
- Great web interface20
- IE support18
- Official mobile emulators16
- Instant access14
- Cloud-based access14
- Real mobile devices11
- Multiple Desktop OS7
- Selenium compatible7
- Screenshots7
- Can be used for Testing and E2E6
- Pre-installed developer tools5
- Video of test runs4
- Many browsers3
- Favourites3
- Webdriver compatible3
- Supports Manual, Functional and Visual Diff Testing3
- Free for Open Source2
- Unify and track test cases2
- Test automation dashboard2
- Test Management2
- Cross-browser testing2
- Cypress Compatible2
- Bi-directional Jira Sync2
- Speed is fast1
- Real devices1
- Visual testing and review0
- Test WCAG Compliance0
- Web accessibility0
Pros of Karma
- Test Runner61
- Open source35
- Continuous Integration27
- Great for running tests22
- Test on Real Devices18
- Backed by google11
- Easy Debugging5
- Remote Control2
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Cons of BrowserStack
- Very limited choice of minor versions2
Cons of Karma
- Slow, because tests are run in a real browser1
- Requires the use of hacks to find tests dynamically1
