Capybara vs Selenium: What are the differences?

Introduction

In website development and testing, Capybara and Selenium are both widely used tools. While they serve a similar purpose, there are some key differences that set them apart. This article aims to highlight the main differences between Capybara and Selenium.

Architecture: Capybara is built on top of Selenium, extending its functionality and providing a more intuitive and user-friendly interface for developers. It simplifies the process of interacting with web elements and handling asynchronous behavior. On the other hand, Selenium is a standalone tool for web automation. It requires explicit commands and has a steeper learning curve compared to Capybara.
Syntax: Capybara provides a high-level domain-specific language (DSL) that is more readable and expressive. It allows developers to write tests in a human-like language, making it easier to understand and maintain. Selenium, on the other hand, relies on lower-level commands and requires developers to have a deeper understanding of web technologies and programming languages.
Browser Support: Capybara supports multiple browsers out of the box, including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and others. It provides a consistent interface for interacting with different browsers, abstracting away the details of each specific browser. Selenium, on the other hand, requires browser-specific drivers to be installed and configured separately. It provides more flexibility in terms of browser versions and configurations but requires additional setup.
Parallel Execution: Capybara comes with built-in support for running tests in parallel, allowing for faster test execution and better resource utilization. It provides a simple API for managing parallelism, making it easier to scale test suites. Selenium, on the other hand, does not have direct support for parallel execution. Developers need to rely on third-party libraries or custom solutions to achieve parallelism.
Community and Ecosystem: Selenium has a larger and more mature community compared to Capybara. It has been around for longer and has a wider adoption in the industry. As a result, there are more resources, tutorials, and community support available for Selenium. Capybara, on the other hand, has a smaller but growing community. It is gaining popularity due to its simplicity and ease of use.
Integration with Frameworks: Capybara integrates well with popular testing frameworks like RSpec and Cucumber, making it easier to write and organize tests. It provides additional features and matchers that are specifically designed for these frameworks. Selenium, on the other hand, can be integrated with any testing framework but may require additional configuration and setup.

In summary, Capybara is a higher-level abstraction built on top of Selenium, providing a more intuitive syntax, browser abstraction, parallel execution support, and seamless integration with testing frameworks. Selenium, on the other hand, offers more flexibility, wider browser support, a larger community, and can be integrated with any testing framework.

Selenium	Capybara
Selenium automates browsers. That's it! What you do with that power is entirely up to you. Primarily, it is for automating web applications for testing purposes, but is certainly not limited to just that. Boring web-based administration tasks can (and should!) also be automated as well.	Capybara helps you test web applications by simulating how a real user would interact with your app. It is agnostic about the driver running your tests and comes with Rack::Test and Selenium support built in. WebKit is supported through an external gem.
-	No setup necessary for Rails and Rack application. Works out of the box.;Intuitive API which mimics the language an actual user would use.;Switch the backend your tests run against from fast headless mode to an actual browser with no changes to your tests.;Powerful synchronization features mean you never have to manually wait for asynchronous processes to complete.
Statistics
GitHub Stars 33.6K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 8.6K	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 15.9K	Stacks 625
Followers 12.6K	Followers 191
Votes 527	Votes 15
Pros & Cons
Pros 177 Automates browsers 154 Testing 101 Essential tool for running test automation 24 Record-Playback 24 Remote Control Cons 8 Flaky tests 4 Slow as needs to make browser (even with no gui) 2 Update browser drivers	Pros 12 Best acceptance test framework for Ruby on Rails apps 2 Synchronous with Rack::Test 1 Fast with Rack::Test Cons 1 Hard to make reproducible tests when using with browser
Integrations
No integrations available	Rails

Capybara vs Selenium

Overview

Capybara vs Selenium: What are the differences?

Advice on Selenium, Capybara

Detailed Comparison

What are some alternatives to Selenium, Capybara?

BrowserStack

Sauce Labs

LambdaTest

Karma

Robot Framework

Karate DSL

Playwright

Rainforest QA

WebdriverIO

Cucumber

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