Best Automation Testing Tools for 2023

What is Automation Testing?

Automation testing can significantly raise the level and quality of the program. At its most rudimentary form is the practice of writing computer programs that automatically execute test cases and generate test results with no human involvement. These scripts can be executed on various devices, OS software, and browsers. 

Popular automation testing tools are available to address the growing needs and demands of the software testing industry. This guide provides a comprehensive list and method of evaluation for some of the most popular test automation tools available on the market right now.

How to Evaluate Test Automation Tools?

Test Automation tools should be evaluated based on a few criteria:

1. The first criterion would be whether or not the team has a sufficient budget to purchase and use licensed tools.
2. Based on the budget, the team must decide where they can afford to allocate money to purchase licensed tools and where they should attempt to utilize open-sourced tools.
3. It’s essential to evaluate and identify areas of testing that would be made easier through automation testing tools.
4. Small test cases can be written for parts of the project that may benefit from automation testing, and then automation testing tools can be used to run these tests.
5. Most automation testing tools offer free trial periods. Therefore, preparing test cases and then using them to run tests and analyze their results would be prudent.
6. During analysis of the results, compare the automation testing tools; if the test proves worthwhile to the software development process and the tool is efficient, it may be beneficial to consider using it.

Cheat Sheet to Evaluating a Test Automation Tool

• Does the tool offer testing across real browsers, devices, and operating systems?
• Is the tool the most effective for the test cases your team wants to use?
• Is the tool within your current budget?
• Does the tool integrate well or support your team’s software?
• Does the tool meet your other technical requirements, such as support for the multiple programming languages used by your team and platform support?
• Does the tool provide a robust reporting mechanism with platforms already utilized by your team, such as Slack?
• Does the tool provide CI/CD Integrations with CI/CD tools that your team may be using?
• Does the tool have good technical support?

Best Automation Testing Tools in 2023

Here is a list of the 20 best automation tools available:

1. Percy and App Percy

In situations where human judgment is necessary to assure functionality, manual testing can be beneficial. However, automated testing is the more practical, effective, and efficient approach for most test cases.

• Percy assists organizations with visual test automation. It takes screenshots, contrasts them with a baseline screenshot pixel by pixel, and flags the visual changes it identifies. It also has a trademark snapshot stabilization technology that automatically pauses dynamic elements such as gifs to avoid flagging false positives. Percy offers significant assistance in performing exact visual regression testing, even allowing connection with automation frameworks to construct more complicated test scenarios.
• App Percy helps teams achieve visual precision and faster release cycles by automating visual testing with AI-based workflows on a real device cloud. App Percy streamlines visual testing for teams by automatically capturing screenshots, comparing them to the baseline, and highlighting relevant visual changes using Percy Visual Engine. With comprehensive visual coverage, teams can confidently deploy code changes with every commit.

Try Percy for Free

2. Selenium

One of the best QA automation tools, Selenium is an open-source web automation tool that is highly popular. This tool can be used to write sophisticated automation scripts with the help of the robust Selenium WebDriver.

• Selenium WebDriver allows users to write and execute automation test scripts on popular browsers like Firefox, Chrome, Edge, and Safari. It also allows users to test the most used operating systems: Windows, Mac, and Linux. Programming languages, including Java, C#, Python, Ruby, PHP, Perl, and JavaScript, can be used to develop Selenium test scripts.
• Selenium IDE, a browser extension for Selenium, offers playback and recording features. This can be highly beneficial for users who want to visualize test runs.

With Browserstack Automate’s Cloud Selenium Grid, the test engineer can scale as testing grows without worrying about managing capacity, adding new devices, or maintaining versions. Parallel Testing with Selenium, aids the user in reducing test execution time.

3. Appium

An excellent illustration of an open-source mobile app automation testing tool is Appium. It serves as a communication platform between the user’s test script, the Appium Server, and the emulator or actual device on which the script is being run. 

• It aims to provide a mobile app testing alternative to Selenium, the most popular automation framework for web application automation testing.
• Appium is best utilized with the Appium Inspector, a GUI tool to identify mobile application selectors. Additionally, Appium supports cloud-based testing with  BrowserStack’s App Automate.
• With Appium, users may create test scripts that can be executed on widely used operating systems like Android, iOS, and Windows while still using the same API. Additionally, Appium supports testing across various real devices and emulators.

The automation framework supports various computer languages, including Python, Ruby, C#, PHP, JavaScript, and Java. 

4. BrowserStack Automate & App Automate

• BrowserStack Automate allows users to use a variety of automation frameworks and tools such as Cypress, Selenium, Puppeteer, Appium, and Playwright. Additionally, it allows the users to use the programming language they are most comfortable with, offering many popular options such as Python, Java, and Javascript.
• BrowserStack App Automate lets teams test native and hybrid apps on various physical mobile and tablet devices, including iPhone, iPad, Samsung Galaxy, Pixel, Nexus, etc. Integrate with BrowserStack using Appium, Espresso, XCUITest, Flutter, or Detox. Experience lightning-fast integration for your test suites using BrowserStack SDK.

These automation testing tools also offer parallel testing, allowing users to run tests in parallel to speed up test execution. Additionally, BrowserStack can be integrated with popular CI/CD tools such as Jenkins, Bamboo, Azure pipelines, AWS pipelines, Travis CI, and many more.

Try BrowserStack for Free

5. Storybook

Storybook allows developers to automate test cases to detect visual regressions or accessibility issues for UI components. Storybook allows users to create a visual component library and individually view and update specific parts. This is highly beneficial since isolated visual tests can be performed for individual components. By automating visual testing, details are protected against accidental alteration. 

The user can maximize the potential of Storybook by integrating with Percy. So, how is visual testing automated with Storybook and Percy?

6. Cucumber

Software testers can write test scripts in plain English using the Behavior Driven Development (BDD) Testing Framework. BDD primarily concentrates on product behavior. One of the most well-liked open-source BDD testing frameworks available is called Cucumber. 

• The Cucumber framework is perfect for user acceptance testing because it enables test cases to be built using natural language structures that explain the expected behavior for a particular scenario. 
• It is used to execute automated acceptance tests written in the “Gherkin” language, which is highly readable and business-compatible.
• Cucumber is generally integrated with frameworks such as Selenium and Appium and acts as a layer on top of the framework, defining a specific behavior to be followed.

7. Cypress

Cypress automation framework is a JavaScript-based end-to-end testing framework built on Mocha – a feature-rich JavaScript test framework running on and in the browser, making asynchronous testing simple and convenient. Cypress solves the major issues of QA engineers and developers while testing modern applications.

Cypress browser support includes Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Edge.

BrowserStack allows you to run Cypress tests on the latest browsers. You can also run hundreds of Cypress group tests in parallel.

8. Playwright

Playwright is an addition to the many automation testing tools available. It supports Java, C#, Python, Javascript/ Typescript making it a popular choice.

• Most of the modern open-source test automation frameworks miss this feature. Rather than restricting, Playwright gives users more features, representing Playwright as a singular framework.
• This automation testing tool is compatible with Windows, Linux, and macOS and can be integrated with primary CI/CD servers such as Jenkins, CircleCI, Azure Pipeline, TravisCI, etc.

9. Puppeteer

Puppeteer is a NodeJS-based test automation Framework that allows programming through Javascript. It’s an Open Source and is maintained by Google. Unlike Selenium, Puppeteer doesn’t rely on a web driver, so we can expect stable test runs. Prominent features of Puppeteer include screenshot testing, performance testing, web scraping, and automation.

10. Espresso

Espresso Android Testing Framework is an open-source framework created by Google for Android that allows QA to write tests on the user interface. It has a simple API, which easily adapts to the testing needs and eliminates the complexity of managing different threads. Most people would describe Espresso’s code base and capabilities as simple and powerful.

• It automatically synchronizes test actions with the UI of the application. The framework also ensures that your activity is started before the tests and closes after the test run is completed.
• Espresso provides automatic synchronization of UI elements and test actions.  As a result, this automation testing tool is faster and more stable.

11. XCUItest

XCUITest is a UI testing framework. iOS developers must build and maintain automation test cases to test apps that align with Apple’s regulations. They ensure that successive deployments of an app are working fine and operate within the guidelines. To do this, developers must use XCUITest.

XCTest and XCUITest are integral test automation tools by Apple that are shipped with Xcode for testing iOS applications. Testers can write UI test classes, methods, and test targets and perform an assert to validate the behavior.

12. TestNG

TestNG is a Java-based automation testing tool that was inspired by JUnit. It overcomes all the limitations of JUnit along with additional functionalities. This makes it more powerful and easier to use. NG here stands for “Next Generation”.

• It is designed to cover a range of test categories, such as Unit testing, Functional testing, Integration testing, etc.
• It helps testers organize the test cases in a structured way.
• TestNG provides advanced features such as annotations, data-driven testing, test sequencing, and parallel testing to execute your Selenium tests effectively.

13. JUnit

JUnit is an open-source unit testing framework for Java. As the name suggests, it is used to test small code units. It is a part of the xUnit architecture. This framework is used by default by Java developers to write as well as execute test cases.

• JUnit follows the approach of “testing first, then coding”. This emphasizes setting up test data and testing the small piece of code first and then implementing the same.
• Since it is an open-source testing framework, a broader community can contribute to the software.
• Compared to other test frameworks, this automation testing tool finds the bug early in the code.
• It provides several test annotations to identify test methods and assertions to test expected results.

14. Jest

Jest is an open-source testing framework built on JavaScript, designed mainly to work with React and React Native-based web applications. This automation testing tool can validate almost everything around JavaScript, especially the browser rendering of web applications.

• It is also widely preferred for automated browser testing, making it one of the most popular Javascript frameworks as it provides a “zero-configuration” testing experience.
• The framework is an ordinary and essential test runner with advanced features. These include the ability to mock auto modules, set up coverage thresholds, and module mappers.
• It also supports multiple projects in the same runner and customer resolvers such as Babel and Webpack.
• Asynchronous testing with Jest is easy and fetches good results.

15. Jasmine

Jasmine is an open-source JavaScript testing framework capable of testing all types of JavaScript applications. This framework supports Behavioral Driven Development (BDD). Using Jasmine, one can perform test cases similar to user behavior on a website.

• Jasmine is highly beneficial for front-end testing.
• It includes UI visibility and responsiveness testing across various devices with different resolutions.
• One can also automate user behavior with custom delay and wait time to simulate actual user behavior.
• It is compatible with most frameworks and libraries, making it versatile and the go-to framework if your primary concern is integration with other tools and libraries

16. Mocha

Mocha has been one of the most popular JavaScript testing frameworks since 2011. It operates on Node.js and provides front-end and back-end asynchronous testing compatibility. It is easy to set up and use, even for developers new to testing.

• Mocha has proven to be a well-established framework with firm documentation.
• It is recognized for its flexibility, and as a result, it has proven to be one of the most dependent libraries.
• Supports JavaScript Assertion libraries like Chai, Should.js, Express.js, etc
• It has a simple and intuitive syntax for writing test cases and comes with a command-line interface that makes it easy to run tests and view results.

17. NightwatchJS

Nightwatch.js is an open-source automated testing framework powered by Node.js. It provides complete E2E (end-to-end) solutions to automation testing with Selenium Javascript for web apps, browser apps, and websites. Nightwatch simplifies the process of continuous integration and sets up automated tests.

• It has an inbuilt command-line test runner suite that helps execute the automated tests.
• It can execute the tests efficiently and perform them in multiple ways, such as sequentially, parallelly, or groups, and tags.
• The framework is easy and simple for beginners to understand as it provides Page Object Model support.
• It is also compatible with both CSS and XPath.

18. Robot Framework

Robot Framework is a generic open-source test automation framework that provides an easy-to-use, keyword-driven approach to automation. It is written in Python and allows users to create high-level test cases that can be easily translated into machine-executable automation scripts.

• It is a keyword-driven approach, which allows testers to write tests using natural language syntax and easily reusable keywords. This makes it easy for both technical and non-technical users to write and maintain tests and collaborate on testing efforts.
• Robot Framework also has a modular architecture, which allows it to be extended with additional libraries and tools.
• It also has a rich set of built-in libraries, including libraries for testing HTTP, FTP, SSH, and XML and for testing user interfaces and databases.

19. Pytest

Pytest is a popular testing framework for Python that simplifies the process of writing and running test cases. It provides a clean and concise syntax for writing tests.

• It offers powerful features for test discovery, test execution, and reporting. Pytest is widely used in the Python community and is known for its ease of use, flexibility, and extensibility.
• pytest offers a wide range of built-in assertion functions that make verifying expected outcomes in your tests easy. Assertion introspection provides clear failure messages, aiding in quick diagnosis of issues.
• pytest has a rich ecosystem of plugins that can enhance its functionality. These plugins can integrate with other tools, generate detailed reports, customize test discovery, and more.
• It supports parameterized testing, allowing you to run the same test logic with multiple input data sets. This is valuable for testing different scenarios and edge cases.

20. NUnit

NUnit is an automation testing tool ported initially from JUnit for .Net Framework and is completely an Open Source Project. NUnit was released in the early 2000s, and though the initial NUnit was ported from JUnit, the recent .Net version 3 is completely rewritten from scratch.

• Due to its feature-packed Unit testing, NUnit has become a favorite choice among developers and testers when running Selenium Integrated browser tests.
• NUnit can run in both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures.
• NUnit includes a fluent version of Assert APIs.

Conclusion

To balance and complement manual testing, it is crucial to start automating testing procedures as soon as feasible. Without automation, comprehensive testing becomes challenging, there is a surfeit of errors, and it becomes increasingly difficult to keep up with progressively shorter deadlines.

There are a variety of automation testing tools available on the market right now and it’s essential to thoroughly evaluate and identify tools complementary to your project’s needs and requirements. The Checklist, Evaluation Techniques, and Test Automation Tools outlined in this guide can help Developer Teams to carry out this task more efficiently.