Appium vs. BrowserStack

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Appium
Score 7.0 out of 10
N/A
N/AN/A
BrowserStack
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
BrowserStack is a test platform built for developers and QAs to expand test coverage, scale and optimize testing with cross-browser, real device cloud, accessibility, visual testing, test management, and test observability. BrowserStack states it currently powers over a billion tests a year for customers who include Amazon, Paypal, Well Fargo Bank, Nvidia, MongoDB, Pfizer, GE, Discovery, React JS, Apache, JQuery and several others rely on BrowserStack to test their web and mobile apps.
$0
per month Unlimited users and 5000 free screenshots
Pricing
AppiumBrowserStack
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Percy - Free
$0
per month Unlimited users and 5000 free screenshots
App Percy - Free
$0
per month 5000 free screenshots and 100 minutes of infrastructure
Test Observability - Unlimited Free
$0
Accessibility Testing - Free
$0
Test Observability - Observability Pro
$0.01
per month per test execution
Percy - Desktop
$0.02
per month per screenshot
App Percy - Visual Core
$0.02
per month per screenshot
Percy - Desktop & Mobile
$0.02
per month per screenshot
App Percy - Visual Cloud
$0.03
per month per screenshot
Live - Desktop
$29
per month per user
Live - Desktop & Mobile
$39
per month per user
App Live - Individual
$39
per month per user
Automate - Desktop
$129
per month 1 parallel test
Live - Team
$150
per month 5 users
App Live - Team
$150
per month 5 users
Automate - Desktop & Mobile
$199
per month 1 parallel test
App Automate - Device Cloud
$199
per month 1 parallel test
App Live - Team Pro
$199
per month 5 users
Accessibility Testing - Team
$199
per month 5 users
App Automate - Device Cloud Pro
$249
per month 1 parallel test
Automate - Enterprise
Contact sales team
Percy - Enterprise
Contact Sales
App Automate - Enterprise
Contact Sales
App Live - Enterprise
Contact sales team
Live - Enterprise
Contact sales team
App Automate - Device Cloud Pro + Visual Cloud
Contact Sales
App Percy - Enterprise
Contact Sales
Test Observability - Enterprise
Contact Sales
Accessibility Testing - Enterprise
Contact Sales
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AppiumBrowserStack
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
AppiumBrowserStack
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AppiumBrowserStack
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Score 7.0 out of 10
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User Ratings
AppiumBrowserStack
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.4
(0 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
5.6
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.8
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
2.3
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
6.1
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(0 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
4.1
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.1
(0 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
7.5
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.7
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
AppiumBrowserStack
Likelihood to Recommend
Appium works well for well-structured mobile applications test automation that is particularly easy to leverage when different pages of the app use similar building blocks. If it takes time for some content in the app to be rendered, ask your dev team to add progress indicators and ensure they are accessible. That might be more complicated to do with Appium, though, if there's no good contact with Dev team established so you can request accessibility IDs added quickly enough when needed. Appium supports another locator strategies as well though (such as xPath or iOS class chain on iOS) but they wouldn't work as fast so you may get really slow tests.
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Multiple real devices available for testing across different OS, platform and browsers for both website and mobile application testing. Automate help to integrate existing project and testing suite to run across different devices. This reduce testing timeline and allow us to quickly release new features to users. Also provide automated accessibility report.
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Pros
  • Crossdevice: With Appium you can automate tests for Android and iOS both. There is no need to learn more than 1 language.
  • Easy: It's really easy to configure and use appium; it's very useful when you're testing strategy is based on "developers write tests".
  • Open Source: It's such a nice strength of appium, because you don't need to pay to use a good tool like Appium is.
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  • UI testing on different Devices like iOS, Android, MacOS, and Windows OS.
  • Automation testing with the help of Cypress gives automation access to different OS and devices.
  • Comparison with two devices how UI will look a like.
  • Bug Capture tool: Using this tool, a user can capture a bug while live recording it, and the tool captures action as well. This helps developers identify and fix the bug more easily.
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Cons
  • There are a number of expected methods that are not implemented, yet. With a similar sounding name as Selenium with similar functions, people who are familiar with Selenium try to use methods that appear to be available, but give a "not yet implemented" exception when run.
  • Documentation can be confusing.
  • Setup was a difficult process. This may not necessarily be the case once you figure everything out, but the whole figuring it out process was difficult and I ran into many, many problems when I first started.
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  • I wish it didn't time out so quickly. I often move back and forth between my native Mac OS system and browsers to BrowserStack for Windows browsers and it often times out so I have to start over.
  • I am not sure why, but when I've been testing in BrowserStack for a long period of time - maybe over a couple of hours, it sometimes gets buggy and unresponsive or slow to respond. It makes it hard to tell if I'm experiencing an issue with the site I'm testing or if it's an issue with BrowserStack.
  • If I'm wishing for the moon and stars, I'd ask for the ability to use BrowserStack to also test with JAWS screen reader. But I'm happy having NVDA.
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Likelihood to Renew
I am rating 10/10 because Appium can use with multiple programming languages with multiple Test engines. Also, it works for both Android and iOS.
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It's simply a must-have tool. As a designer, I have to ensure my work is at least functional in older browsers. I also have to ensure that, when I design for mobile devices, any differences between platforms aren't problematic. BrowserStack allows me to test my work in a fraction of the time, with a whole lot more accuracy.
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Usability
I would like to give 9/10 rating to Appium because of it can easily integrate with popular frameworks and CI/CD tools, as well as it is reliable, flexible and easy to use. The setup can bit complex in initial step, but once on configured it's very easy to use and enables stable and scalable mobile automation for real and cloud devices.
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It integrates directly in internal networks and local development. The point and click interface of choosing your device, pick the browser/version and you have a working emulation of that exact environment. What else could you ask for? I've set our least computer savvy users up with BrowserStack for testing in minutes. It feels like it's just part of your local environemnt.
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Reliability and Availability
No answers on this topic
I rated BrowserStack's availability a 10 because it is consistently reliable, with minimal to no downtime or unplanned outages. The platform is accessible whenever needed, ensuring uninterrupted testing. Its robust infrastructure and proactive monitoring ensure a seamless experience, allowing us to meet deadlines without delays caused by availability issues and all
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Performance
No answers on this topic
The tests are fast considering the fact that they're Appium tests. I've seen tests reliably pass or fail when they're supposed to, with next to zero issues on the BrowserStack side of things. Tests launch only seconds after I kick off them off from my CLI.
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Support Rating
No answers on this topic
I'm saying a 10 for support for BrowserStack only based on feedback from the development team. I myself have never had to reach out to support for any questions or issues, but others in the company have. From my conversations with them, the support was fantastic and had been a pleasure working with the BrowserStack team.
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In-Person Training
No answers on this topic
Yes, it was online training on meet, and trainer looks like skilled and technical strong, he has covered end to end all the features and he has answers all the queries. because of this trainings we are able to implement it by our own in the organization, thank you for support and training.
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Online Training
No answers on this topic
It was a quick training from the support of browserstack, it was nice and easy to understand, thanks again for the support given by the team. and regularly I used to receive mails for training from support for any new feature they launch, I was able to spread same training to all my team and dev.
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Implementation Rating
No answers on this topic
I rated the implementation satisfaction an 8 because while it went smoothly overall, there were some challenges during the initial learning phase and integration with existing tools. Key insights include the importance of providing sufficient training upfront and ensuring seamless integration with other systems to minimize disruptions and improve adoption speed.
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Alternatives Considered
Most of mobile testing tools which are available in the market are paid license tools. But Appium is Open source mobile testing tool. We can create customised automation framework using Appium. It also supports various languages such as Java, Javascript etc. And also supports various operating systems such as Android, IOS etc. We can easily integrate Appium frameworks with CI/CD [Jenkins, Git etc].
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N/A - BrowserStack was the first software I've tried to address these requirements. Previously we've been limited to testing on a handful of devices and browser combinations that our team has physical access to. We're also evaluating Litmus as a complementary service to BrowserStack for analysing our email templates and deliverability.
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Scalability
No answers on this topic
I may not be the best person to answer this as I am only using it for 1 department and at 1 site but will still try my best As far as Scalability for Devices for Mobile Automation is concerned, it gets a Solid 10, as the users can run cases on upto 10 device parallel and also have the best choices of devices to choose
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Return on Investment
  • For cost of ownership, the increase is positive times infinity, as it's free to install and use
  • Lead time for suite development can be a negative, if not planned for during sprint planning
  • Using Appium to execute tests in parallel across a cloud solution can improve CI/CD cycles by 100's of a percent
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  • It reduced the cost of buying multiple devices as we have multiple devices access in it
  • Easily accessible from anywhere due to it cloud availability
  • Introducing this to our client also helped us in building trust as well as winning their confidence during deliverables
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ScreenShots

BrowserStack Screenshots

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