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  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Testing Frameworks
  4. Browser Testing
  5. Selenium vs TestCafe

Selenium vs TestCafe

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Selenium
Selenium
Stacks16.2K
Followers12.6K
Votes527
GitHub Stars33.6K
Forks8.6K
TestCafe
TestCafe
Stacks262
Followers273
Votes26
GitHub Stars9.9K
Forks678

Selenium vs TestCafe: What are the differences?

Introduction

Selenium and TestCafe are both popular testing frameworks used for automating web browsers. However, there are key differences between the two that make them suitable for different use cases.

  1. Browser Support: Selenium is known for its extensive browser support, allowing users to automate tests on a wide range of browsers including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer. On the other hand, TestCafe simplifies browser automation by eliminating the need for WebDriver and providing out-of-the-box support for all major browsers.

  2. Installation and Setup: Selenium requires the installation of different drivers for each browser, which can be challenging for beginners. It also requires configuring the WebDriver for the desired browser. In contrast, TestCafe only requires a single installation with no additional setup, making it easier to get started and use.

  3. Architecture: Selenium follows a client-server architecture, where the WebDriver acts as a client and communicates with the browser to execute commands. TestCafe has a different approach with an independent proxy server that injects JavaScript into the web page, eliminating the need for browser-specific drivers.

  4. Language Support: Selenium supports multiple programming languages including Java, C#, Python, Ruby, and JavaScript, allowing testers to choose their preferred language. On the other hand, TestCafe only supports JavaScript, which may be limiting for testers who are comfortable with languages other than JavaScript.

  5. Selector Strategy: Selenium provides a wide range of locator strategies to identify elements on a web page, such as ID, name, class, XPath, and CSS selector. TestCafe, on the other hand, uses a declarative selector strategy where you can query elements using functions like selector, find, and withText.

  6. Parallel Testing and CI/CD: Selenium offers robust support for parallel testing and integration with Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) tools like Jenkins and Bamboo. TestCafe also supports parallel testing and can easily integrate with CI/CD tools, making it suitable for large-scale test automation.

In summary, Selenium offers extensive browser support, supports multiple programming languages, and provides more advanced locator strategies, but requires more setup and configuration. TestCafe simplifies browser automation, requires no additional setup, and supports parallel testing, but is limited to JavaScript and has a different selector strategy.

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Advice on Selenium, TestCafe

Shivam
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 ............................ ............................ .............................

241k views241k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Selenium
Selenium
TestCafe
TestCafe

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.

It is a pure node.js end-to-end solution for testing web apps. It takes care of all the stages: starting browsers, running tests, gathering test results and generating reports.

-
Create stable tests (and no manual timeouts); Write in latest JS or TypeScript; Detect JS errors in your code; Launch concurrent tests; Build readable tests with PageObject; Include tests in continuous integration system; Rapid test development
Statistics
GitHub Stars
33.6K
GitHub Stars
9.9K
GitHub Forks
8.6K
GitHub Forks
678
Stacks
16.2K
Stacks
262
Followers
12.6K
Followers
273
Votes
527
Votes
26
Pros & Cons
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
Pros
  • 8
    Cross-browser testing
  • 4
    Built in waits
  • 4
    Easy setup/installation
  • 4
    Open source
  • 3
    UI End to End testing
Cons
  • 9
    No longer free
Integrations
No integrations available
TypeScript
TypeScript
JavaScript
JavaScript
Jenkins
Jenkins
Travis CI
Travis CI
TeamCity
TeamCity

What are some alternatives to Selenium, TestCafe?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Robot Framework

Robot Framework

It is a generic test automation framework for acceptance testing and acceptance test-driven development. It has easy-to-use tabular test data syntax and it utilizes the keyword-driven testing approach. Its testing capabilities can be extended by test libraries implemented either with Python or Java, and users can create new higher-level keywords from existing ones using the same syntax that is used for creating test cases.

Karate DSL

Karate DSL

Combines API test-automation, mocks and performance-testing into a single, unified framework. The BDD syntax popularized by Cucumber is language-neutral, and easy for even non-programmers. Besides powerful JSON & XML assertions, you can run tests in parallel for speed - which is critical for HTTP API testing.

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.

Rainforest QA

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

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.

Cucumber

Cucumber

Cucumber is a tool that supports Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD) - a software development process that aims to enhance software quality and reduce maintenance costs.

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