BrowserStack vs. Selenium

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
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
Selenium
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
Selenium is open source software for browser automation, primarily used for functional, load, or performance testing of applications.N/A
Pricing
BrowserStackSelenium
Editions & Modules
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
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BrowserStackSelenium
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BrowserStackSelenium
Best Alternatives
BrowserStackSelenium
Small Businesses
TestComplete
TestComplete
Score 8.0 out of 10
BrowserStack
BrowserStack
Score 8.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
ReadyAPI
ReadyAPI
Score 7.0 out of 10
ReadyAPI
ReadyAPI
Score 7.0 out of 10
Enterprises
ignio AIOps
ignio AIOps
Score 8.1 out of 10
ignio AIOps
ignio AIOps
Score 8.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
BrowserStackSelenium
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(0 ratings)
9.2
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.4
(0 ratings)
9.2
(0 ratings)
Usability
5.5
(0 ratings)
8.8
(0 ratings)
Availability
9.8
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
2.3
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
6.1
(0 ratings)
8.3
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
7.3
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
4.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.1
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Configurability
7.5
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.7
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
9.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
BrowserStackSelenium
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
Read full review
When you have to test the UI and how it behaves when certain actions are performed, you need something that can automate the browsers. This is where Selenium comes to the rescue. If you have to test APIs and not the frontend (UI), I would recommend going with other libraries that support HTTP Requests. Selenium is good only when you have no choice but to run the steps on a browser.
Read full review
Pros
  • 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.
Read full review
  • For any web based UI automation, Selenium is the best tool out there to automate your tests.
  • It supports multiple coding languages like Java, Python, Ruby, C# etc.. to choose from.
  • There is a huge community of users and can get many answers on StackOverFlow.
  • It has lot of other plugins to make your tests even more efficient.
Read full review
Cons
  • 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.
Read full review
  • Recognize Adobe Flash and MS Silver Light elements without additional help
  • Detect and locate Java applets ingredients
  • Having the "Wait-till-Displayed" or "Wait-till-Present" as a built in Web Driver function instead of requirement for writing loops and defining expliccit wait, visiblewait, invisiblewait, etc.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
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.
Read full review
We love this product mainly because of its high customization abilities and the ease of use. Moreover, its free and can be learned easily through online communities and videos. The tests are more consistent and reliable as compared to Manual tests. It has enabled us to test a large number of features all in one go, which would have impossible through manual tests. The reports generated at the end of the tests are really helpful for the QA and the development teams to get a fair view of the application.
Read full review
Usability
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.
Read full review
As I mentioned earlier, the reason I use Selenium is because there is a fairly widespread community of users, and user support services are at a good level. because the application is open source, it works on many platforms (Windows, Linux, IOS) without any problems. In addition, it gives us a lot of options for writing functional tests. For errors that we receive through the application, we can easily find the reasons for errors in the forums.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
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
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Performance
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.
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
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.
Read full review
Selenium does not have technical support available easily. You have to go through forums to get the information you need. However, there are excellent forums out there that make it easy to troubleshoot. The open-source flexibility makes it difficult to have dedicated support.
Read full review
In-Person Training
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.
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Online Training
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.
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
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.
Read full review
We did everything we needed to use it. Now we can execute our tests on different operational systems and browsers running few tests simultaneously. We also implemented Appium framework to execute our tests on mobile devices, such as iPhones, iPads, Android phones and tablets. We use SauceLabs for our test execution and Jenkins for continuous integration.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
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.
Read full review
At the time of adoption, there were not many other alternatives that were even close to being competitive when it comes to browser testing. As far as I know now to this day, there is still little competition to Selenium for what it does. Any other browser-based testing still utilises Selenium to interact with the browser.
Read full review
Scalability
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
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
  • 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
Read full review
  • Generation of detailed finding reports helped in cost savings in regard to direct labor.
  • Quality Assurance technicians found value in repeating mundane duties that they perform daily. It saved mental energy due to the automation process.
  • The value was established in high volume usage in setting up meetings as well as new accounts with A/B testing. Also merely cleaning up old test documents by evaluating them and organization or deletion.
Read full review
ScreenShots

BrowserStack Screenshots

Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of