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Ghost Inspector vs Protractor: What are the differences?

Ghost Inspector: Catch website bugs and regressions before they cost you. 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; Protractor: End-to-end test framework for Angular and AngularJS applications. Protractor is an end-to-end test framework for Angular and AngularJS applications. Protractor runs tests against your application running in a real browser, interacting with it as a user would.

Ghost Inspector and Protractor can be primarily classified as "Javascript Testing Framework" tools.

"Simple test editor" is the top reason why over 2 developers like Ghost Inspector, while over 2 developers mention "Quick tests implementation" as the leading cause for choosing Protractor.

Protractor is an open source tool with 8.28K GitHub stars and 2.26K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Protractor's open source repository on GitHub.

PeopleKeep, Omaze, and Garlic Tech Ltd are some of the popular companies that use Protractor, whereas Ghost Inspector is used by Binary.com, Twig World, and Vestiaire Collective. Protractor has a broader approval, being mentioned in 40 company stacks & 101 developers stacks; compared to Ghost Inspector, which is listed in 21 company stacks and 16 developer stacks.

Advice on Ghost Inspector and Protractor
Yildiz Dila
testmanager/automation tester at medicalservice · | 5 upvotes · 263.5K views
Needs advice
on
CypressCypress
and
ProtractorProtractor

In the company I will be building test automation framework and my new company develops apps mainly using AngularJS/TypeScript. I was planning to build Protractor-Jasmine framework but a friend of mine told me about Cypress and heard that its users are very satisfied with it. I am trying to understand the capabilities of Cypress and as the final goal to differentiate these two tools. Can anyone advice me on this in a nutshell pls...

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Replies (2)
Kevin Emery
QE Systems Engineer at Discovery, Inc. · | 4 upvotes · 161.7K views
Recommends
on
CypressCypressProtractorProtractor

I've used both Protractor and Cypress extensively. Cypress is the easier and more reliable tool, whereas Protractor is the more powerful tool. Your choice of tool should depend on your specific testing needs. Here are some advantages and disadvantages of each tool:

Cypress advantages:

  • Faster

  • More reliable (tends to throw fewer intermittent false failures)

  • Easier to read code (handles promises gracefully)

Cypress disadvantages:

  • Cannot switch between browser tabs

  • Cannot switch to iFrames

  • Cannot specify clicks or keypresses explicitly as if a real user was interacting

  • Cannot move the mouse to specific co-ordinates

  • Sometimes has trouble switching between different top-level domains, so not good for testing external links

  • Cypress is a newer tool with less extensive documentation and less community support

Protractor advantages:

  • More powerful because it is Selenium-based - it can switch between tabs, it can handle external links to other domains, it can handle iFrames, simulate keypresses and clicks, and move the mouse to specific co-ordinates within the browser.

  • More extensive community support and documentation

Protractor disadvantages:

  • Slower and more brittle - in general there is a higher likelihood of cryptic and/or intermittent errors which may cause your tests to fail even though there is nothing wrong with your application

  • For highly experienced automation engineers, the fundamental "brittle" nature of Selenium can be worked around - it can be reliable but only if you really know what you are doing

  • Less graceful handling of promises - relies on async/await or .then to manage the order of execution. Therefore it is a bit harder to read the code.

  • Harder to set up, and the method of setup impacts its reliability. For example, a hub/node configuration where the selenium jar is on a different physical machine than the browser under test will cause unreliability in your tests. Not everyone knows about this type of thing, so it's common to find Selenium frameworks that are set up poorly.

It's probably better to use Cypress if

  • you're at a smaller company and have a close relationship with developers who can help write hooks or stubs in their code to assist your testing

  • you don't need to do things like switch between tabs or test links to external top-level domains

It's probably better to use Protractor if

  • You might need to switch between tabs or test external links to other domains within the scope of your framework

  • You want to use a more accurate simulation of how a real user interacts with a browser (i.e. click at this location, type these keys)

  • You're at a company where you won't have any support from developers in writing hooks or stubs to make their code more testable in a less powerful framework like Cypress

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Jian Wang
Web Engineer at sentaca · | 1 upvotes · 190.5K views
Recommends

Please try Handow, the e2e tool basing on Puppeteer.

Gherkin syntax compatible

Chrome/Chromium orentied, driven by Puppeteer engine

Complete JavaScript programming

Create test suites rapidly without coding (or a little bit), basing on built-in steps library

Schedule test with plans and arrange stories with sequential stages

Fast running, execute story groups in parallel by multi-workers

Built-in single page report render

Cover page view, REST API and cookies test

https://github.com/newlifewj/handow

http://demo.shm.handow.org/reports

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Pros of Ghost Inspector
Pros of Protractor
  • 3
    No code required
  • 3
    Runscope integration
  • 3
    Simple test editor
  • 2
    Screenshot comparison
  • 2
    Videos of every test run
  • 1
    Primarily focus on functional testing
  • 1
    Easy to use API enables remote control
  • 1
    Data-Driven testing
  • 1
    Minimal effort to migrate to another tool like Selenium
  • 1
    Partials and Variables enable fast test creation
  • 1
    30-40 in-parallel tests for cheap
  • 1
    Detailed Documentation
  • 1
    Supports end to end testing with Runscope
  • 1
    Extensive Integrations available
  • 0
    Scheduling tests
  • 0
    Licensed but cheaper compared to other tools
  • 0
    Email notification and Alerts
  • 9
    Easy setup
  • 8
    Quick tests implementation
  • 6
    Flexible
  • 5
    Open source
  • 5
    Promise support

Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions

Cons of Ghost Inspector
Cons of Protractor
  • 1
    Support Cross-device testing (device, web)
  • 0
    Load & Performance testing
  • 0
    Flash Support inside browser
  • 4
    Limited

Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

- No public GitHub repository available -

What is 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.

What is Protractor?

Protractor is an end-to-end test framework for Angular and AngularJS applications. Protractor runs tests against your application running in a real browser, interacting with it as a user would.

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

What companies use Ghost Inspector?
What companies use Protractor?
See which teams inside your own company are using Ghost Inspector or Protractor.
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What tools integrate with Ghost Inspector?
What tools integrate with Protractor?

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What are some alternatives to Ghost Inspector and Protractor?
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.
Cypress
Cypress is a front end automated testing application created for the modern web. Cypress is built on a new architecture and runs in the same run-loop as the application being tested. As a result Cypress provides better, faster, and more reliable testing for anything that runs in a browser. Cypress works on any front-end framework or website.
JavaScript
JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.
Git
Git is a free and open source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency.
See all alternatives