Top 10 Continuous Testing Tools

The Agile development model focuses on iterative and rapid delivery. This helps to go early to the market. To align testing with rapid delivery, continuous testing is crucial. When testing is aligned as part of CI/CD pipelines it’s called continuous testing. Not all tools support continuous testing, so organizations need to be careful while choosing test automation tools.

One major advantage of a continuous testing tool is that it executes tests as soon as code deployment is complete, and feedback is instant. The developer does not need to wait for the tester to complete the testing.

Top 10 Popular Continuous Testing Tools

Continuous Testing Tools help to accelerate the testing process thus helping to faster delivery. Most of the modern test automation frameworks support continuous testing however some may support a limited number of continuous integration tools. It’s always challenging to choose the best tool for the organization, below is the curated list of test automation tools that support continuous testing.

Note that the below tools are not ranked, we have chosen popular tools that help you to make the right decision.

Testsigma

Testsigma is an AI-based no-code tool, shipped under a commercial license. It is known for its rich user interface and encourages self-learning.

It mainly focuses on end-to-end test automation, API test automation, and visual regression testing. Testsigma has built-in support for cloud execution. However, it supports third-party cloud testing tools as well.

It provides seamless integration to the CI/CD or continuous testing. Interestingly, integration can be done without writing a single line of code.

Testsigma documentation is comprehensive, beginners can easily start automation just by following the instructions.

Features of Testsigma

• Supports end-to-end test automation for web, mobile as well as desktop applications.
• Supports different testing types such as end-to-end testing, API testing, visual regression testing
• No technical knowledge is required to write the automation scripts as it is a no-code tool.
• Provides cross-browser testing capability
• Cloud testing is in-built, and also supports third-party cloud testing tools integration.
• Budget-friendly pricing options
• Comprehensive reporting and customizable dashboards
• AI capability to reduce the maintenance efforts

License: Commercial

Website Link: https://testsigma.com

Selenium

Selenium is the most popular website testing tool. It is open source and supports many programming languages such as Java, JavaScript, C#, Python, Perl, PHP, and Ruby. Selenium is used for cross-browser testing as it supports all major browsers such as Firefox, Chrome, Edge, and Safari.

Selenium is known for its customization and extensibility. However, Selenium requires proficient knowledge of coding to develop the framework and write the test cases. It is a favorite choice for an organization that follows complex application architecture.

Features of Selenium

• It is open source and free to use
• Highly customizable and extensible
• Supports complex use cases and the framework can be tuned as per the organization’s requirements
• Supports cross-browser testing
• Supports multiple platforms such as Windows, Linux, and macOS
• Selenium tests can be integrated into almost all different types of Continuous Integration tools such as Jenkins, Azure DevOps, TeamCity, GitHub actions, etc.
• Selenium supports integration to third-party tools like Jira, and qTest, and Cloud-based testing tools like BrowserStack, SauceLabs, etc.

License: Open source

Website Link: https://www.selenium.dev/

Playwright

Playwright is an open-source test automation tool backed by Microsoft. Playwright uses different architecture compared to Selenium. It injects commands directly into the browser without any middleware like Webdriver, because of that Playwright is faster and more reliable compared to other test automation tools.

Playwright supports different programming languages such as Java, JavaScript, C#, and Python. Additionally, it supports many modern browsers like Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and the open-source version of Safari i.e. Webkit browser.

Features of Playwright

• Easy to set up and install
• Supports End-to-End Testing, API Testing, and Component testing out of the box
• Playwright supports cross-browser testing
• Provides assertion libraries out of the box
• In-built reporters including HTML and Allure reporters
• Easy to integrate with Continuous tools like Jenkins, Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions
• Support for edge cases like file upload and download scenarios
• Supports different programming languages
• Provides the capability to integrate third-party tools like BrowserStack, Sauce Labs, etc.

License: Open source

Website Link: https://playwright.dev

Cypress

Cypress is a developer-friendly test automation tool; it is available in both open-source and commercial versions. Cypress provides many interesting features such as a UI-based test runner, an easy and guided CLI-based installation process, etc. It is built on top of NodeJS and supports JavaScript/Typescript programming knowledge.

Cypress can be used for functional testing, API testing, and component testing. Cypress dashboard is a commercial tool, that provides visual dashboards, heatmaps, trends, etc.

Features of Cypress

• Easy to install and configure
• UI-based test runner
• Cypress test can be integrated into CI/CD pipelines
• Supports cross-browser testing
• Cypress can access the internal app so you can control the AUT dynamically
• Cypress provides API testing capability with Mocks and Stubs
• Many debugging options
• Automatically detects the locally installed browsers
• Supports many cloud testing tools integration

License: Open source | Commercial

Website Link: https://www.cypress.io

Katalon Studio

Katalon is commercial software built on top of Selenium and Appium. It supports Web, mobile, and desktop application test automation on Linux, Windows, and macOS. It also supports continuous testing.

Katalon provides the capability of codeless automation features that may be helpful for beginners. It supports different types of testing strategies and it offers an object repository that helps in reusability.

Features of Katalon Studio

• Supports multiple platforms such as Windows, Linux, and macOS
• Rich IDE to accelerate the automation testing
• Test recorder helps to record and playback the automation tests
• Supports Keyword-driven testing
• It provides capabilities to integrate with CI/CD pipelines
• Built-in reporting helps to target the different stakeholders

License: Commercial

Website Link: https://katalon.com

TestComplete

TestComplete is a proprietary automation testing tool that supports web, desktop, and mobile application automation. TestComplete comes with a rich IDE that helps beginners to design, develop, and execute automation tests faster.

TestComplete as a tool supports the Windows operating system. However, when it comes to mobile it supports both iOS and Android. TestComplete provides programming language support for JavaScript, Python, VBScript, or Jscript.

Features of TestComplete

• TestComplete can be used for cross-browser testing
• TestComplete supports desktop, web application, and mobile application testing
• Keyword-driven testing and object recognition are some of the notable features of TestComplete
• It supports continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines.
• It has inbuilt reporting capabilities which makes reporting easier
• TestComplete can be integrated with third-party tools like Jira, Jenkins, Azure DevOps, etc.
• TestComplete provides dedicated technical support for its customers

License: Commercial

Website Link: https://smartbear.com/product/testcomplete

WebdriverIO

Webdriver is a popular open-source NodeJS test automation framework. It is built on top of Selenium. For mobile testing, it integrates Appium. WebdriverIO helps to overcome many challenges that are in Selenium. Unlike Selenium, WebdriverIO comes as a full package with no need to build the framework from scratch. WebdriverIO is known for its customization and extensibility features.

Features of WebdriverIO

• Open source and free to use
• Supports both Asynchronous and Synchronous execution
• WebdriverIO can be easily integrated with other testing frameworks such as Mocha, Jest, Jasmine, etc.
• WebdriverIO can be seamlessly integrated with CI/CD pipelines
• It supports both desktop web and native mobile applications
• It provides very good documentation
• WebdriverIO provides many different types of reporters
• Cross-browser testing and cross-platform testing are the most helpful features of WebdriverIO

License: Open source

Website Link: https://webdriver.io

Appium

Appium is an open-source test automation framework. Initially, it was designed to support mobile applications both iOS and Android. However, this can be extended to support web applications as well. Appium uses a similar architecture to Selenium.

As Appium is popular across the industry and is used by thousands of people, community support is very good.

Features of Appium

• Appium supports mobile automation of iOS and Android both
• It supports Native, Web, and Hybrid mobile applications
• Cross-browser testing can be performed easily
• Appium can be integrated with popular Continuous Integration Tools (CI/CD) like Jenkins, GitHub Actions, etc.
• It supports third-party library and tools integration
• Simulator and Emulator Support the most popular feature of Appium
• It supports various programming languages such as Java, JavaScript (Node.js), Python, Ruby, C# etc
• It supports parallel execution of tests across multiple devices and emulators/simulators

License: Open source

Website Link: https://appium.io

TestCafe

TestCafe is a less explored test automation framework, It has two variants open-source and commercial. It is known for clear syntax and increased readability, and because of that, it reduces the number of lines of code compared to any other automation tool.

TestCafe Studio provides additional capabilities that help the organization accelerate test automation. However, TestCafe studio comes with a cost. It is known for its cloud-ready feature and is easy to install and set up. Automatic Waiting and synchronization reduces manual wait within the test scripts.

Features of TestCafe

• Easy to set up and cloud-ready feature
• TestCafe integrates with all popular CI/CD solutions
• Supports concurrent test runs to run your tests in multiple browsers at the same time
• built-in debug mode to pinpoint the source to find the root cause
• Different test report formats
• TestCafe Studio supports the visual writing of test cases
• Studio provides a rich IDE that accelerates test automation and saves time
• It includes built-in capabilities for capturing screenshots and recording videos during test execution
• TestCafe is extensible through plugins and custom scripts

License: Open source | Commercial

Website Link: https://testcafe.io

Mabl

Mabl is a modern AI-based software test automation tool. It supports different types of testing such as end-to-end testing for both mobile and web applications, API testing, performance testing, and accessibility testing.

One of the powerful features of Mabl is the AI-based script generation feature. Using natural language, one can generate the test automation script instantly without manually writing the code. It helps to validate the complex application behavior using AI features.

Features of Mabl

• Autonomous Test automation technology uses AI and ML to autonomously create and maintain tests.
• Self-healing tests help to reduce maintenance.
• Supports end-to-end testing of web applications, mobile applications (iOS and Android), and APIs
• Mabl can be integrated with BDD frameworks such as Cucumber
• Mabl supports continuous testing, integrating seamlessly with CI/CD pipelines to automate the execution of tests.
• It also supports visual testing, accessibility testing, and performance testing.

License: Commercial

Website Link: https://www.mabl.com

Conclusion

Modern development is moving towards faster and more frequent deliverables. To align the goal of the organization, shift left testing is crucial. Faster delivery is possible only when testing tasks are completed within the time frame.

If automation tests are configured to CI/CD tools as part of the continuous testing strategy that helps to execute the tests without any manual intervention. Additionally, defects can be found at an early stage of development, which decreases the cost of fixing the defects.

Continuous testing tools contribute majorly to the ROI of testing. Though there are many automation tools in the market, integrating them into CI/CD pipelines is not easy. Tools like Testsigma focus on providing end-to-end automation solutions that require very minimal technical knowledge to use the tool.

Frequently asked question

Which tool is used for continuous testing?

There are many tools available for continuous testing. However, most of the tools require proficient technical knowledge and maintenance may be a bigger challenge. Testsigma helps to integrate with CI/CD pipelines with ease.

Is Jenkins a CI tool?

Yes, Jenkins is a popular open-source continuous integration tool that is widely used across the industry.

Which is a popular CI tool?

Some of the popular CI Tools are Jenkins, Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, Spinnaker, Travis CI, CircleCI, etc.

What is the CI tool used for?

CI tool also known as a Continuous Integration tool is used to automate the code merge, build, and testing process of the development process. Additionally, the deployment part is also taken care of by the same or similar tools.