StackShareStackShare
Follow on
StackShare

Discover and share technology stacks from companies around the world.

Follow on

© 2025 StackShare. All rights reserved.

Product

  • Stacks
  • Tools
  • Feed

Company

  • About
  • Contact

Legal

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Service
  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Testing Frameworks
  4. Javascript Testing Framework
  5. Nightwatchjs vs Protractor

Nightwatchjs vs Protractor

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Protractor
Protractor
Stacks2.2K
Followers543
Votes33
GitHub Stars8.7K
Forks2.3K
Nightwatchjs
Nightwatchjs
Stacks214
Followers323
Votes11
GitHub Stars11.9K
Forks1.4K

Nightwatchjs vs Protractor: What are the differences?

Developers describe Nightwatchjs as "Automated testing and continous integration framework based on node.js and selenium webdriver". Nightwatch.js is an easy to use Node.js based End-to-End (E2E) testing solution for browser based apps and websites. It uses the powerful Selenium WebDriver API to perform commands and assertions on DOM elements. On the other hand, Protractor is detailed as "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.

Nightwatchjs belongs to "Browser Testing" category of the tech stack, while Protractor can be primarily classified under "Javascript Testing Framework".

Nightwatchjs and Protractor are both open source tools. Nightwatchjs with 9.43K GitHub stars and 927 forks on GitHub appears to be more popular than Protractor with 8.24K GitHub stars and 2.23K GitHub forks.

PeopleKeep, Omaze, and Garlic Tech Ltd are some of the popular companies that use Protractor, whereas Nightwatchjs is used by WebbyLab, UniSharp, and GoEuro. Protractor has a broader approval, being mentioned in 24 company stacks & 22 developers stacks; compared to Nightwatchjs, which is listed in 16 company stacks and 5 developer stacks.

Share your Stack

Help developers discover the tools you use. Get visibility for your team's tech choices and contribute to the community's knowledge.

View Docs
CLI (Node.js)
or
Manual

Advice on Protractor, Nightwatchjs

Yildiz
Yildiz

testmanager/automation tester at medicalservice

May 12, 2020

Needs adviceonAngularJSAngularJSTypeScriptTypeScriptCypressCypress

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...

277k views277k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Protractor
Protractor
Nightwatchjs
Nightwatchjs

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.

Nightwatch.js is an easy to use Node.js based End-to-End (E2E) testing solution for browser based apps and websites. It uses the powerful Selenium WebDriver API to perform commands and assertions on DOM elements.

Test Like a User; For Angular Apps; Automatic Waiting
e2e; test; javascript; nodejs
Statistics
GitHub Stars
8.7K
GitHub Stars
11.9K
GitHub Forks
2.3K
GitHub Forks
1.4K
Stacks
2.2K
Stacks
214
Followers
543
Followers
323
Votes
33
Votes
11
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 9
    Easy setup
  • 8
    Quick tests implementation
  • 6
    Flexible
  • 5
    Promise support
  • 5
    Open source
Cons
  • 4
    Limited
Pros
  • 3
    Open source
  • 2
    Testing
  • 2
    Automates browsers
  • 1
    Cross-Browser Testing
  • 1
    Parallel Test Running
Cons
  • 2
    No automatic wait
  • 1
    Less flexibility
  • 1
    Configuration complexity
  • 1
    Limited native mobile app support
  • 1
    Limited browser support
Integrations
AngularJS
AngularJS
Angular
Angular
Node.js
Node.js
Selenium
Selenium

What are some alternatives to Protractor, Nightwatchjs?

BrowserStack

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

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.

Sauce Labs

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.

Mocha

Mocha

Mocha is a feature-rich JavaScript test framework running on node.js and the browser, making asynchronous testing simple and fun. Mocha tests run serially, allowing for flexible and accurate reporting, while mapping uncaught exceptions to the correct test cases.

LambdaTest

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.

Jasmine

Jasmine

Jasmine is a Behavior Driven Development testing framework for JavaScript. It does not rely on browsers, DOM, or any JavaScript framework. Thus it's suited for websites, Node.js projects, or anywhere that JavaScript can run.

Karma

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.

Jest

Jest

Jest provides you with multiple layers on top of Jasmine.

Cypress

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.

Playwright

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.

Related Comparisons

GitHub
Bitbucket

Bitbucket vs GitHub vs GitLab

GitHub
Bitbucket

AWS CodeCommit vs Bitbucket vs GitHub

Kubernetes
Rancher

Docker Swarm vs Kubernetes vs Rancher

gulp
Grunt

Grunt vs Webpack vs gulp

Graphite
Kibana

Grafana vs Graphite vs Kibana