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Appium vs Sauce Labs comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Appium
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
Mobile Development Platforms (7th), Regression Testing Tools (6th)
Sauce Labs
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
113
Ranking in other categories
Functional Testing Tools (13th), Test Automation Tools (18th)
 

Featured Reviews

Luis Gerardo Meneses Hernandez - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows for direct interaction with an application's DOM but complex configuration
What I like about Appium right now is that it's like Cypress in the sense that I can get to the new DOM of the application and select the components and create the functions to test the components in the way I want them to be tested. That's why I like it right now.
AnupKumar4 - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers good stability and robust but lacks generative AI capabilities
Technical support is equally very important. If you talk about anything deployed to production, and the project is live, customers are using that, and they might face some issues, some functional issues. That's when support people play a role in identifying the fix or the incident. Based on that, we create an incident based on the customer defect or whatever. Once the incident gets raised, the support will play a role in working on that particular incident. If it's a code-based incident, administration, or integration issue, support people play a big role in resolving those issues before reaching the exact developers.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The interface is user-friendly, which is beneficial for users, even for those who are new to it."
"The most valuable feature is that it's easy to launch applications. Appium has everything that Selenium has. So many good tools support Appium. We can take some Excel sheets and use them to fill out the text box that's in there. We can also take screenshots of failures."
"It has great documentation and excellent community support."
"The solution is easy to use."
"It's an open-source solution with a very large community and available documentation."
"Appium has easy interaction with mobile."
"The solution helps with test automation. We focus mostly on Java."
"We do not need to pay for the solution. It’s free."
"The most valuable feature is cross-browser, cross-OS, cross-mobile device testing."
"The error logging is also very robust. If we run a test through Sauce Labs and there's some sort of issue, a log will appear on the screen. Log messages are usually heinous and horrible... Sauce Labs is incredibly good at saying things like, 'Hey, here is the exact issue. Fix this and you can run the test.' That helps in getting things up and running and executing the way they should."
"Sauce Lab analytics helped us to get detailed knowledge on test cases execution and logs."
"It offers the single best solution for integrating deep automated browser testing in a CI/CD pipeline."
"The custom capabilities that can be provided to Sauce Labs VMs during automated testing sessions are a valuable option for experimental or niche testing."
"Sauce Labs provides us with more combinations to test, so we can keep adding platforms and devices to our network. That's been a very seamless experience. Let's say there's an iOS or a private device we need. Sauce Labs has helped get all those set up when needed."
"It helped to integrate our performance testing and UAT, which helped to deliver a bug free software for our customers."
"As stated earlier we use Sauce Labs for a combination of automated testing and manual testing. Therefore the most useful features are the ability to run the functional automated tests via a Sauce Labs tunnels which allows access to applications in our internal network. The second most useful feature is the manual side."
 

Cons

"The challenging part with Appium is that installation can be a bit tricky. It can be challenging to set up in Android versus iOS environments."
"Appium could improve by enabling record and run techniques similar to what they have in other licensing tools, such as Micro Focus. We have to all write the code, and then we can proceed."
"The deployment process and configuration are quite complex and require improvement."
"We need some bug fixes for nested elements."
"The user interface needs improvement because there are issues when setting up environment variables."
"Image recognition could be improved. We have some images in our mobile applications. It should be able to run from the cloud, so we can automate the catcher."
"Configuration-wise, there is a lot of room for improvement."
"The tool needs to add a dependency manager."
"Lacks the ability to start multiple tests simultaneously."
"This product is not super scalable, because you have a very specific number of VMs that you can use."
"Sauce Labs has room for improvement with its price point. Using a real mobile device, and having that dedicated to your team, costs more than actually purchasing a mobile device. We haven't tried the real devices yet. This is because of their price point."
"Sauce Labs can include new technologies like generative AI capabilities."
"Overall, I think Sauce Labs provides us with a valuable tool and resource. As far as what could be improved, I would say the overall test execution time. Some of the calls take a bit longer than I expect, for example in web browser tests; while the execution time isn't obnoxious, it could be improved so that overall tests/test suites finish faster."
"Start execution time as each time a set of tests start, it will launch a new VM so it takes a bit of time."
"We had some specific features that we opened tickets on, although they were not earth-shattering. For example, the way the menus scroll could be improved because it does not have a bar, the way that people are used to, where you can move up and down."
"The only drawback is the speed, it will be good if we have a server in Asia too. It will be great if we can improve speed while initialization and execution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is free."
"I'm unsure if there's any cost associated with Appium. I got the free package which includes the server GUI application and the inspector application, and it was free to download, and that's all I need to get my work done. I'm not aware of any additional costs associated with the tool."
"This is an open source solution so it does not cost anything for licensing or otherwise."
"The price is good for people to be able to make a favorable decision for the value."
"It's open source, so it's completely free."
"The solution is open source."
"Appium is free and open-source."
"The solution is open-source."
"It is an expensive tool."
"Try the free trial and work with a Sauce Labs representative to see what package works best for your application(s)."
"​Now that we have an enterprise license, we no longer have to worry about minutes each month!​"
"Their pricing is incredibly competitive."
"Cost-wise, it's decent. If you have to get the base version out of it, it's the best solution to go with. As compared to other cloud service providers, the pricing of Sauce Labs is decent."
"Trial the product and see if it suits your needs."
"The pricing is reasonable due to the amount of diversity that they provide. However, I feel they might be more flexible to bargain based on their relationship with our organization."
"The number of concurrent VMs that Sauce Labs provides depends on your purchase license level."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise19
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise73
 

Questions from the Community

Do you recommend Appium?
I do recommend Appium. It is an open-source solution and completely free of charge. We use Appium and Appium Studio as our base for any type of mobile automation for testing. It has a great interfa...
What do you like most about Appium?
Appium helps me to do as much as much as I want to.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Appium?
My experience with Appium from a pricing perspective is favorable due to it being open source, making it a cost-effective option.
What do you like most about Sauce Labs?
It has significantly enhanced our testing accuracy by approximately 50%.
What needs improvement with Sauce Labs?
Sauce Labs can include new technologies like generative AI, which can reduce the human effort in writing test cases. For example, in my current project, we reduced the time it took to complete user...
What is your primary use case for Sauce Labs?
I work as an automation engineer using Selenium WebDriver with Java, and API automation using Rest Assured with Java. I have also worked with Docker integration on AWS. Additionally, I have experie...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nuvizz, Coupa Software, Eventbrite, Evernote
Salesforce.com, Mozilla, Zendesk, Puppet Labs, Twitter, Bank of America, Eventbrite, Bleacher Report, Okta, Intuit, Travelocity, Sharecare, CapitalOne.
Find out what your peers are saying about Appium vs. Sauce Labs and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.