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BrowserStack

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Panther

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BrowserStack vs Panther: What are the differences?

BrowserStack: Instant access to a lab of 2000+ 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; Panther: A browser testing and web crawling library for PHP and Symfony. It is a convenient standalone library to scrape websites and to run end-to-end tests using real browsers.

BrowserStack and Panther belong to "Browser Testing" category of the tech stack.

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
  • 2000+ 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, Panther provides the following key features:

  • Executes the JavaScript code contained in webpages
  • Supports everything that Chrome (or Firefox) implements
  • Allows screenshots taking

Panther is an open source tool with 2.01K GitHub stars and 126 GitHub forks. Here's a link to Panther's open source repository on GitHub.

Advice on BrowserStack and Panther

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

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Replies (3)
Aaron Evans
Testing Strategist at One Shore · | 3 upvotes · 14.3K views

A SaaS offering like Sauce Labs (or BrowserStack or LambdaTest, etc) will provide a remote Selenium/Appium Grid including the ability to run test automation in parallel (up to the amount based your subscription level) an a wide array of browsers and mobile devices.

These tools can be expensive, but if you can afford them, the expertise and effort of maintaining the grid, browser updates, etc. is worth it.

AWS Device Farm can be significantly cheaper, but is much more work to setup and run. It will not give you as many devices, or the reporting and screen/video capture you get with the the services. And there is no support for AWS Device Farm, and very poor documentation. I have used it, but do not recommend it. Running your own grid and physical device lab is better, but I'd stick with a service like Sauce Labs or Perfecto which will save you time and give you better services despite the higher price tag.

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Recommends
on
BrowserStackBrowserStack

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

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Jaymie Falconi
Recommends
on
BitBarBitBar

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.

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Pros of BrowserStack
Pros of Panther
  • 134
    Multiple browsers
  • 75
    Ease of use
  • 64
    Real browsers
  • 43
    Ability to use it locally
  • 26
    Good price
  • 20
    Great web interface
  • 18
    IE support
  • 16
    Official mobile emulators
  • 14
    Instant access
  • 14
    Cloud-based access
  • 11
    Real mobile devices
  • 7
    Multiple Desktop OS
  • 7
    Selenium compatible
  • 7
    Screenshots
  • 6
    Can be used for Testing and E2E
  • 5
    Pre-installed developer tools
  • 4
    Video of test runs
  • 3
    Many browsers
  • 3
    Favourites
  • 3
    Webdriver compatible
  • 3
    Supports Manual, Functional and Visual Diff Testing
  • 2
    Free for Open Source
  • 2
    Unify and track test cases
  • 2
    Test automation dashboard
  • 2
    Test Management
  • 2
    Cross-browser testing
  • 2
    Cypress Compatible
  • 2
    Bi-directional Jira Sync
  • 1
    Speed is fast
  • 1
    Real devices
  • 0
    Visual testing and review
  • 0
    Test WCAG Compliance
  • 0
    Web accessibility
    Be the first to leave a pro

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    Cons of BrowserStack
    Cons of Panther
    • 2
      Very limited choice of minor versions
      Be the first to leave a con

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      - No public GitHub repository available -

      What is BrowserStack?

      BrowserStack is the leading test platform built for developers & QAs to expand test coverage, scale & optimize testing with cross-browser, real device cloud, accessibility, visual testing, test management, and test observability.

      What is Panther?

      It is a convenient standalone library to scrape websites and to run end-to-end tests using real browsers.

      Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

      What companies use BrowserStack?
      What companies use Panther?
      Manage your open source components, licenses, and vulnerabilities
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      What tools integrate with BrowserStack?
      What tools integrate with Panther?

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      What are some alternatives to BrowserStack and Panther?
      Browserling
      We run the browsers on our servers. Fully interactive sessions, not static screenshots. No flash, no applets, nothing to install. Powered entirely by <canvas> and javascript.
      LambdaTest
      LambdaTest platform provides secure, scalable and insightful test orchestration for website, and mobile app testing. Customers at different points in their DevOps lifecycle can leverage Automation and/or Manual testing on LambdaTest.
      Ghost Inspector
      It lets you create and manage UI tests that check specific functionality in your website or application. We execute these automated browser tests continuously from the cloud and alert you if anything breaks.
      AWS Device Farm
      Run tests across a large selection of physical devices in parallel from various manufacturers with varying hardware, OS versions and form factors.
      Appium
      Appium is an open source test automation framework for use with native, hybrid, and mobile web apps. It drives iOS and Android apps using the WebDriver protocol. Appium is sponsored by Sauce Labs and a thriving community of open source developers.
      See all alternatives