Appium vs Sauce Labs comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Appium
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Mobile Development Platforms (7th), Regression Testing Tools (5th)
Sauce Labs
Average Rating
8.8
Number of Reviews
113
Ranking in other categories
Functional Testing Tools (11th), Test Automation Tools (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2024, in the Regression Testing Tools category, the mindshare of Appium is 5.7%, down from 6.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sauce Labs is 0.5%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Regression Testing Tools
Unique Categories:
Mobile Development Platforms
4.8%
Functional Testing Tools
6.3%
Test Automation Tools
3.0%
 

Featured Reviews

OC
Sep 26, 2022
Open source, with no performance issues, but setting it up wasn't as straightforward, and its documentation and Touch Actions need improvement
What needs improvement in Appium is its documentation. It needs to give more context on the libraries that Appium is using under the hood. For example, my team is using Appium for Android automation, and a lot of times, I feel that there's functionality that's available through the Appium interface, that exists within the UIAutomator, but there aren't a lot of useful or helpful resources on the internet to find that information, so it would be good to have some linkage with the underlying platform itself. Another room for improvement in Appium is that it's buggy sometimes. For example, at times, there's a bug in the inspector application that doesn't allow me to save my desired capability set, so it would be nice to get that bug fixed, but overall, Appium is a good tool. The Touch Actions functionality in Appium also needs improvement. For example, if I want to initiate a scroll on the device that I'm running Appium on, sometimes Swipe works, but in other situations, I have to explicitly use action chains, so I'm not too sure what's the better approach. What I'd like to see in the next version of Appium is a more intelligent and more intuitive AppiumLibrary, in terms of identifying menus and scroll bars, etc., because right now, I'm unsure if I have to do a lot of export reversals to get to the elements I'm looking for. It would be nice to have some functionality built in, which would allow me to easily get those exports.
AnupKumar4 - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 9, 2024
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 solution is easy to use."
"The latest versions of the solution are stable."
"Obviously because of automation, it reduces manual testing efforts."
"The way Appium server interacts with mobile apps is fantastic. It provides all the information about the elements inside the app, Android as well as iOS. I can interact with the element quickly, just type some text or get some text values from the element - whether it's a drop-down, or web text, or a native element."
"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."
"We do not need to pay for the solution. It’s free."
"Appium provides a record-and-play option, and the commands are the same as those that Selenium uses. So a person who has some exposure to Selenium will be able to write a piece of code in Appium."
"Appium has easy interaction with mobile."
"Our machines are mostly Windows. Being able to test with Safari, on a Mac, and other types of browser pieces without having to manage all the infrastructure is the biggest feature that our team enjoys."
"The most valuable feature is the cross-browser feature, it has many android and iOS devices both simulators and real devices. It's easy to integrate. I also like video recording too."
"There is a huge amount of open source, community provided resources."
"Live device testing. As we all know, It's really hard and challenging to find/purchase many real devices to test because it will be costly and not all the team can be able to purchase all of the devices out there. We used to have a lot of real devices under our labs. However, it is really time-consuming to maintain those devices and make sure they are up to date with the testing requirements."
"Before implementing Sauce Labs, we tested physical devices that team members had to share. It was more feasible when we were all located in one office, but we couldn't leverage our offshore capacity. With this solution, we can do everything remotely, which is essential now that most of us work from home."
"I like the dashboard and seeing the test results. As a manager, I like to see the insights of the people using it, understanding the total path and run. I can see all of that as a manager. I also know team members love seeing the dashboard and seeing the test results in real-time."
"With only a few clicks, it gives us the availability to use any browser and OS combination whenever we want."
"It provides a comprehensive selection of browsers and platform versions for our test automations and CI/CD pipeline process. It also provides a comprehensive set of virtual mobile devices, which we can configure for our automation and availability. These features are valuable for us when it comes to testing our applications. We have a website and mobile applications that we want to test and diversify to various browsers and mobile devices as well as restore various versions. This helps us to find bugs that users might be facing and correct them."
 

Cons

"We previously worked with native applications, and there weren't any good mobile app testing tools. We started working with React Native, which works well with Appium, but it would be good to see better integration; the way elements are displayed can be messy. React Native is very popular nowadays, so it's essential to have that compatibility."
"They should add an in-built framework."
"We need some bug fixes for nested elements."
"We haven't been able to fully leverage Appium for multiple reasons. I think number one is just that the tests take a long time to run. We have had some issues around just the results themselves and how predictable they are, but those are not issues with Appium directly."
"The user interface needs improvement because there are issues when setting up environment variables."
"Configuration-wise, there is a lot of room for improvement."
"One thing which can be really helpful is that there is some kind of a recorder made available rather than scripting everything."
"An application developed on the Unity platform, such as a gaming application, objects are moving in that case. Interacting with those elements is still lacking in Appium. Appium doesn't have the internal library to play with the Unity platform. That is a huge lack right now."
"The testing process is difficult. I need to prove the complete competency of the tool, and I am finding that challenging."
"Sauce Labs needs to be improved in the different platforms for farm testing, like iOS and Android farm testing and farm testing web browsers.​"
"Latency, due to Sauce Labs being a cloud-based solution, has been a concern. We work in different continents and countries, but last time I checked, Sauce Labs was only offering two data centers, one in the EU and another in the US. If you're not in either of those two places, you would have latency and issues running your test cases."
"The ability to install profiles on iOS real mobile devices should be included."
"Running tests in the SauceCloud can take longer than running in a local environment."
"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."
"Progress towards reducing application testing time can be made."
"One of the challenging areas for us is the reporting and the matrix. It should be based on roles, but right now it is only available for the admin role. The admin role can really do a lot of stuff, but our infrastructure team, which holds the admin role, is not ready to hand it over to us on the testing team. If Sauce Labs had permissions associated with roles, where this role could do this activity and that role could do that activity, it would be easier for us."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We found out that we could explore features of the solution for 30 days trial. We can switch to a permanent license later if we want."
"The solution is open source."
"There is no license for this solution because it is open-source."
"It's completely 100% free, and there are no hidden fees."
"The price is good for people to be able to make a favorable decision for the value."
"Appium is open source; we can use it for free."
"The solution is open source so it is free."
"The solution is free."
"Their pricing is incredibly competitive."
"The pricing is definitely on the higher end, and there are other options that are more cost-effective."
"​Now that we have an enterprise license, we no longer have to worry about minutes each month!​"
"Try the free trial and work with a Sauce Labs representative to see what package works best for your application(s)."
"It is an expensive tool."
"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."
"Compared with other services, Sauce Labs is a bit expensive."
"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
16%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
16%
Healthcare Company
7%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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?
The price is good for people to be able to make a favorable decision for the value.
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

 

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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: May 2024.
787,779 professionals have used our research since 2012.