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BrowserStack vs Cypress: What are the differences?
BrowserStack: Instant access to a lab of 1000+ real mobile and desktop browsers for testing. Live, Web-Based Browser Testing Instant access to all real mobile and desktop browsers. Say goodbye to your lab of devices and virtual machines; Cypress: Better, faster, and more reliable testing for anything that runs in a browser. Cypress is a front end automated testing application created for the modern web. Cypress is built on a new architecture and runs in the same run-loop as the application being tested. As a result Cypress provides better, faster, and more reliable testing for anything that runs in a browser. Cypress works on any front-end framework or website.
BrowserStack can be classified as a tool in the "Browser Testing" category, while Cypress is grouped under "Javascript Testing Framework".
Some of the features offered by BrowserStack are:
- Real Device Cloud. Test on a range of physical Android and iOS mobile devices and tablets for the most accurate results
- 1100+ desktop browsers. Latest versions of IE, Edge, Safari, Chrome, Firefox and more on a range of Windows and OS X platforms on a robust cloud infrastructure
- Test dev environments. Our Local Testing feature allows you to test development and internal websites seamlessly, without setup or configuration
On the other hand, Cypress provides the following key features:
- Time Travel
- Debuggability
- Automatic Waiting
"Multiple browsers" is the primary reason why developers consider BrowserStack over the competitors, whereas "Open source" was stated as the key factor in picking Cypress.
According to the StackShare community, BrowserStack has a broader approval, being mentioned in 579 company stacks & 239 developers stacks; compared to Cypress, which is listed in 60 company stacks and 45 developer stacks.
I am looking to purchase one of these tools for Mobile testing for my team. It should support Native, hybrid, and responsive app testing. It should also feature debugging, parallel execution, automation testing/easy integration with automation testing tools like Selenium, and the capability to provide availability of devices specifically for us to use at any time with good speed of performing all these activities.
I have already used Perfecto mobile, and Sauce Labs in my other projects before. I want to know how different or better is AWS Device farm in usage and how advantageous it would be for us to use it over other mentioned tools

Stability - Just works. Availability - More than 15 datacenters. Enterprise features like SSO, local testing and SOC2/GDPR compliant.

BitBar's Dedicated Devices would be a great option for you. It allows you to dedicate (reserve) devices for your use only which also having access to all of the devices in the shared cloud. BitBar has the features and integrations that you are looking for as well.
In the company I will be building test automation framework and my new company develops apps mainly using AngularJS/TypeScript. I was planning to build Protractor-Jasmine framework but a friend of mine told me about Cypress and heard that its users are very satisfied with it. I am trying to understand the capabilities of Cypress and as the final goal to differentiate these two tools. Can anyone advice me on this in a nutshell pls...
I've used both Protractor and Cypress extensively. Cypress is the easier and more reliable tool, whereas Protractor is the more powerful tool. Your choice of tool should depend on your specific testing needs. Here are some advantages and disadvantages of each tool:
Cypress advantages:
Faster
More reliable (tends to throw fewer intermittent false failures)
Easier to read code (handles promises gracefully)
Cypress disadvantages:
Cannot switch between browser tabs
Cannot switch to iFrames
Cannot specify clicks or keypresses explicitly as if a real user was interacting
Cannot move the mouse to specific co-ordinates
Sometimes has trouble switching between different top-level domains, so not good for testing external links
Cypress is a newer tool with less extensive documentation and less community support
Protractor advantages:
More powerful because it is Selenium-based - it can switch between tabs, it can handle external links to other domains, it can handle iFrames, simulate keypresses and clicks, and move the mouse to specific co-ordinates within the browser.
More extensive community support and documentation
Protractor disadvantages:
Slower and more brittle - in general there is a higher likelihood of cryptic and/or intermittent errors which may cause your tests to fail even though there is nothing wrong with your application
For highly experienced automation engineers, the fundamental "brittle" nature of Selenium can be worked around - it can be reliable but only if you really know what you are doing
Less graceful handling of promises - relies on async/await or .then to manage the order of execution. Therefore it is a bit harder to read the code.
Harder to set up, and the method of setup impacts its reliability. For example, a hub/node configuration where the selenium jar is on a different physical machine than the browser under test will cause unreliability in your tests. Not everyone knows about this type of thing, so it's common to find Selenium frameworks that are set up poorly.
It's probably better to use Cypress if
you're at a smaller company and have a close relationship with developers who can help write hooks or stubs in their code to assist your testing
you don't need to do things like switch between tabs or test links to external top-level domains
It's probably better to use Protractor if
You might need to switch between tabs or test external links to other domains within the scope of your framework
You want to use a more accurate simulation of how a real user interacts with a browser (i.e. click at this location, type these keys)
You're at a company where you won't have any support from developers in writing hooks or stubs to make their code more testable in a less powerful framework like Cypress
Please try Handow, the e2e tool basing on Puppeteer.
Gherkin syntax compatible
Chrome/Chromium orentied, driven by Puppeteer engine
Complete JavaScript programming
Create test suites rapidly without coding (or a little bit), basing on built-in steps library
Schedule test with plans and arrange stories with sequential stages
Fast running, execute story groups in parallel by multi-workers
Built-in single page report render
Cover page view, REST API and cookies test
As we all know testing is an important part of any application. To assist with our testing we are going to use both Cypress and Jest. We feel these tools complement each other and will help us get good coverage of our code. We will use Cypress for our end to end testing as we've found it quite user friendly. Jest will be used for our unit tests because we've seen how many larger companies use it with great success.
Pros of BrowserStack
- Multiple browsers131
- Ease of use71
- Real browsers59
- Ability to use it locally40
- Good price23
- Great web interface17
- IE support15
- Official mobile emulators13
- Cloud-based access12
- Instant access11
- Real mobile devices8
- Selenium compatible5
- Multiple Desktop OS5
- Can be used for Testing and E2E4
- Screenshots4
- Video of test runs3
- Pre-installed developer tools3
- Many browsers2
- Webdriver compatible2
- Favourites2
- Supports Manual, Functional and Visual Diff Testing2
- Cypress Compatible1
- Free for Open Source1
Pros of Cypress
- Open source29
- Great documentation22
- Simple usage20
- Fast18
- Cross Browser testing10
- Easy us with CI9
- Npm install cypress only5
- Não faz café1
- Good for beginner automation engineers1
- 10
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Cons of BrowserStack
- Very limited choice of minor versions2
Cons of Cypress
- Cypress is weak at cross-browser testing21
- Switch tabs : Cypress can'nt support14
- No iFrame support12
- No page object support9
- No multiple domain support9
- No file upload support8
- No support for multiple tab control8
- No xPath support8
- No support for Safari7
- Cypress doesn't support native app7
- Re-run failed tests retries not supported yet7
- No support for multiple browser control7
- $20/user/thread for reports5
- Adobe4
- Using a non-standard automation protocol4
- Not freeware4
- No 'WD wire protocol' support3