StackShareStackShare
Follow on
StackShare

Discover and share technology stacks from companies around the world.

Follow on

© 2025 StackShare. All rights reserved.

Product

  • Stacks
  • Tools
  • Feed

Company

  • About
  • Contact

Legal

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Service
  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Testing Frameworks
  4. Javascript Testing Framework
  5. Jest vs RequireJS

Jest vs RequireJS

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Jest
Jest
Stacks15.2K
Followers4.1K
Votes175
RequireJS
RequireJS
Stacks9.0K
Followers3.2K
Votes307

Jest vs RequireJS: What are the differences?

Key Differences between Jest and RequireJS

  1. Unit Testing vs. Module Loading Jest is primarily a unit testing framework for JavaScript, whereas RequireJS is a module loader for managing dependencies in JavaScript applications. Jest focuses on providing a comprehensive testing solution with built-in test runners, assertion libraries, and mocking capabilities. In contrast, RequireJS focuses on modularizing code by allowing developers to define and load dependencies declaratively.

  2. Mocks and Spies vs. Asynchronous Module Loading Jest offers a powerful mocking and spying feature that allows developers to simulate different scenarios and behaviors during testing. It enables the creation of mock functions, mocks modules, and spies on function calls. RequireJS, on the other hand, focuses on asynchronous module loading. It allows developers to define modules and their dependencies asynchronously, loading them when needed to improve the performance of the application.

  3. Simplified Configuration vs. Configuration Flexibility Jest provides a simplified configuration setup for testing JavaScript applications. It automates most of the configuration process, making it easy for developers to get started quickly. RequireJS, on the other hand, offers more flexibility in terms of configuration. It allows developers to configure the module loading behavior, paths, aliases, and more, providing granular control over how modules are loaded and resolved.

  4. Built-in Code Coverage vs. Modularity Jest includes code coverage functionality out of the box, allowing developers to analyze how much of their codebase is covered by tests. It provides detailed reports highlighting the portions of code that need more testing. RequireJS, being a module loader, does not include built-in code coverage features. Developers need to rely on external tools or plugins to achieve code coverage analysis.

  5. Integrated Test Environment vs. Standalone Library Jest provides an integrated test environment, allowing developers to run tests directly in the browser-like environment without needing an actual browser. It provides a simulated DOM, console, and other browser objects, making it suitable for testing browser-specific code. In contrast, RequireJS is a standalone library that focuses on handling module dependencies. It does not provide a built-in test environment and is mainly used in conjunction with other testing frameworks or environments.

  6. Community and Ecosystem Support Jest is backed by a more extensive community and ecosystem compared to RequireJS. It has become the go-to choice for many JavaScript developers, resulting in a rich ecosystem of plugins, extensions, and community support. RequireJS, though still popular, has a relatively smaller community and ecosystem in comparison. It may require more custom solutions or additional integration efforts for specific use cases.

In summary, Jest and RequireJS differ in their primary focus, with Jest emphasizing unit testing and mocking capabilities, while RequireJS focuses on managing dependencies and modularizing code. Jest provides a simplified configuration and an integrated test environment, along with built-in code coverage. RequireJS offers more flexibility in configuration and handling asynchronous module loading, but requires additional tools for code coverage analysis and lacks an integrated test environment. Jest also benefits from a larger community and ecosystem support.

Share your Stack

Help developers discover the tools you use. Get visibility for your team's tech choices and contribute to the community's knowledge.

View Docs
CLI (Node.js)
or
Manual

Advice on Jest, RequireJS

Dane
Dane

Feb 7, 2020

Needs adviceonCypressCypressJestJest

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.

836k views836k
Comments
Anonymous
Anonymous

Feb 6, 2020

Needs advice

Postman will be used to do integration testing with the backend API we create. It offers a clean interface to create many requests, and you can even organize these requests into collections. It helps to test the backend API first to make sure it's working before using it in the front-end. Jest can also be used for testing and is already embedded into React. Not only does it offer unit testing support in javascript, it can also do snapshot testing for the front-end to make sure components are rendering correctly. Enzyme is complementary to Jest and offers more functions such as shallow rendering. UnitTest will be used for Python testing as it is simple, has a lot of functionality and already built in with python. Sentry will be used for keeping track of errors as it is also easily integratable with Heroku because they offer it as an add-on. LogDNA will be used for tracking logs which are not errors and is also a Heroku add-on. Its good to have a separate service to record logs, monitor, track and even fix errors in real-time so our application can run more smoothly.

290k views290k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Jest
Jest
RequireJS
RequireJS

Jest provides you with multiple layers on top of Jasmine.

RequireJS loads plain JavaScript files as well as more defined modules. It is optimized for in-browser use, including in a Web Worker, but it can be used in other JavaScript environments, like Rhino and Node. It implements the Asynchronous Module API. Using a modular script loader like RequireJS will improve the speed and quality of your code.

Familiar Approach: Built on top of the Jasmine test framework, using familiar expect(value).toBe(other) assertions;Mock by Default: Automatically mocks CommonJS modules returned by require(), making most existing code testable;Short Feedback Loop: DOM APIs are mocked and tests run in parallel via a small node.js command line utility
-
Statistics
Stacks
15.2K
Stacks
9.0K
Followers
4.1K
Followers
3.2K
Votes
175
Votes
307
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 36
    Open source
  • 32
    Mock by default makes testing much simpler
  • 23
    Testing React Native Apps
  • 20
    Parallel test running
  • 16
    Fast
Cons
  • 4
    Documentation
  • 4
    Ambiguous configuration
  • 3
    Difficult
  • 2
    Difficult to run single test/describe/file
  • 2
    Bugged
Pros
  • 79
    Open source
  • 69
    Modular script loader
  • 66
    Asynchronous
  • 49
    Great for AMD
  • 30
    Fast

What are some alternatives to Jest, RequireJS?

npm

npm

npm is the command-line interface to the npm ecosystem. It is battle-tested, surprisingly flexible, and used by hundreds of thousands of JavaScript developers every day.

Mocha

Mocha

Mocha is a feature-rich JavaScript test framework running on node.js and the browser, making asynchronous testing simple and fun. Mocha tests run serially, allowing for flexible and accurate reporting, while mapping uncaught exceptions to the correct test cases.

Browserify

Browserify

Browserify lets you require('modules') in the browser by bundling up all of your dependencies.

Jasmine

Jasmine

Jasmine is a Behavior Driven Development testing framework for JavaScript. It does not rely on browsers, DOM, or any JavaScript framework. Thus it's suited for websites, Node.js projects, or anywhere that JavaScript can run.

Yarn

Yarn

Yarn caches every package it downloads so it never needs to again. It also parallelizes operations to maximize resource utilization so install times are faster than ever.

Cypress

Cypress

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.

CodeceptJS

CodeceptJS

It is a modern end to end testing framework with a special BDD-style syntax. The test is written as a linear scenario of user's action on a site. Each test is described inside a Scenario function with I object passed into it.

Protractor

Protractor

Protractor is an end-to-end test framework for Angular and AngularJS applications. Protractor runs tests against your application running in a real browser, interacting with it as a user would.

AVA

AVA

Even though JavaScript is single-threaded, IO in Node.js can happen in parallel due to its async nature. AVA takes advantage of this and runs your tests concurrently, which is especially beneficial for IO heavy tests. In addition, test files are run in parallel as separate processes, giving you even better performance and an isolated environment for each test file.

Ghost Inspector

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.

Related Comparisons

GitHub
Bitbucket

Bitbucket vs GitHub vs GitLab

GitHub
Bitbucket

AWS CodeCommit vs Bitbucket vs GitHub

Kubernetes
Rancher

Docker Swarm vs Kubernetes vs Rancher

gulp
Grunt

Grunt vs Webpack vs gulp

Graphite
Kibana

Grafana vs Graphite vs Kibana