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Ghost Inspector vs Jest: What are the differences?
Developers describe Ghost Inspector as "Automated website testing. Record yourself browsing once. Replay it continuously from the cloud". Ghost Inspector 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. On the other hand, Jest is detailed as "Painless JavaScript Unit Testing". Jest provides you with multiple layers on top of Jasmine.
Ghost Inspector can be classified as a tool in the "In-Browser Testing" category, while Jest is grouped under "Javascript Testing Framework".
Some of the features offered by Ghost Inspector are:
- Automated browser testing from the cloud
- Chrome extension for test recording
- GUI editor for test building and editing
On the other hand, Jest provides the following key features:
- Familiar Approach: Built on top of the Jasmine test framework, using familiar expect(value).toBe(other) assertions
- Mock by Default: Automatically mocks CommonJS modules returned by require(), making most existing code testable
- Short Feedback Loop: DOM APIs are mocked and tests run in parallel via a small node.js command line utility
"Simple test editor" is the top reason why over 2 developers like Ghost Inspector, while over 24 developers mention "Open source" as the leading cause for choosing Jest.
Jest is an open source tool with 26.4K GitHub stars and 3.57K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Jest's open source repository on GitHub.
Pros of Ghost Inspector
- No code required3
- Runscope integration3
- Simple test editor3
- Screenshot comparison2
- Videos of every test run2
- Primarily focus on functional testing1
- Easy to use API enables remote control1
- Data-Driven testing1
- Minimal effort to migrate to another tool like Selenium1
- Partials and Variables enable fast test creation1
- 30-40 in-parallel tests for cheap1
- Detailed Documentation1
- Supports end to end testing with Runscope1
- Extensive Integrations available1
- Scheduling tests0
- Licensed but cheaper compared to other tools0
- Email notification and Alerts0
Pros of Jest
- Open source36
- Mock by default makes testing much simpler32
- Testing React Native Apps23
- Parallel test running20
- Fast16
- Bundled with JSDOM to enable DOM testing13
- Mock by default screws up your classes, breaking tests8
- Out of the box code coverage7
- Promise support7
- One stop shop for unit testing6
- Great documentation3
- Assert Library Included2
- Built in watch option with interactive filtering menu1
- Preset support1
- Can be used for BDD0
- Karma0
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Cons of Ghost Inspector
- Load & Performance testing0
- Flash Support inside browser0
- Support Cross-device testing (device, web)0
Cons of Jest
- Documentation4
- Ambiguous configuration4
- Difficult3
- Many bugs still not fixed months/years after reporting2
- Multiple error messages for same error2
- Difficult to run single test/describe/file2
- Ambiguous2
- Bugged2
- BeforeAll timing out makes all passing tests fail1
- Slow1
- Reporter is too general1
- Unstable1
- Bad docs1
- Still does't support .mjs files natively1
- Can't fail beforeAll to abort tests1
- Interaction with watch mode on terminal0