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Appium pros and cons

Vendor: Appium
4.0 out of 5

Pros & Cons summary

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Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Appium provides excellent interaction with mobile apps and elements, supporting both Android and iOS platforms.
Appium is open-source with vast community and documentation support, making it a cost-effective option for users.
Appium supports multiple frameworks and shares functions with Selenium, simplifying the transition for users familiar with Selenium.
Appium integrates seamlessly with tools such as GitHub Actions and BrowserStack, enhancing automation capabilities.
Appium supports multiple programming languages and allows for versatile test automation, particularly beneficial for Java users.

CONS

Appium encounters challenges with applications built on React.js, AngularJS, and Unity, with insufficient internal libraries to support these platforms effectively.
There is significant room for improvement in configuration and stability, impacting the efficiency and reliability of tests.
Tests in Appium can be slow and unpredictable, making it difficult to fully leverage it and requiring improvements in speed and result reliability.
Appium struggles with automated validations following iOS updates and lacks support for automation without using XPath, causing manual intervention.
The installation and configuration of Appium are complicated, requiring numerous dependencies and intricate setups, hindering initial setup efficiency.
 

Appium Pros review quotes

AS
Independent consultant, at OpenText
Apr 4, 2025
The interface is user-friendly, which is beneficial for users, even for those who are new to it.
Luis Gerardo Meneses Hernandez - PeerSpot reviewer
Software developer at Apps2Go TECH
Sep 2, 2024
What I like about Appium right now is that it's like Cypress in the sense that............. to test the components in the way I want them to be tested.
Siddartha Rao - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at Deloitte India (Offices of the US)
Sep 30, 2022
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.
Learn what your peers think about Appium. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: June 2026.
900,228 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Abhishek-Tiwari - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Associate at PwC
Sep 28, 2022
I like that Appium is an opensource tool, I also like its cross-platform flexibility, and Appium provides a record-and-play option with commands that 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.
Vignesh Venkatesan - PeerSpot reviewer
SDET at Trimble Inc
Jun 18, 2024
It can be used with different programming languages.
VT
Senior Test Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Oct 12, 2022
The library is extensive so the driver interacts with most functions or actions on mobile devices.
Alona Tupchei - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineering manager I - Quality at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Sep 28, 2022
We develop apps using the React Native framework, and Appium integrates well for testing those apps. The Appium automation framework also has good integration with GitHub Actions and plenty of other tools and frameworks, including BrowserStack.
OC
Sr Data Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Sep 26, 2022
I haven't explored other solutions in this particular area, but what I like best about Appium is the fact that it shares functions with Selenium. The extension of Selenium functions allows me to use all of the methods that exist in that domain, and it just makes it simpler for me. I've been using Selenium for some time as well, so using Appium just seems like a natural fit for me.
Prakash-G - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Automation Engineer at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Sep 19, 2022
We get a list that shows all devices that are connected to the system.
Eko Kristianto - PeerSpot reviewer
IT consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Sep 8, 2022
The best feature of Appium is that it allows you to inspect the element. With the Appium Inspector, you don't have to install another application to do the inspection. I also like that Appium has Android device connectivity. Currently, most people use Appium as automation software, and I haven't found any other tool that's more powerful than Appium.
 

Appium Cons review quotes

AS
Independent consultant, at OpenText
Apr 4, 2025
The installation part of Appium is somewhat clumsy, requiring numerous dependencies and configurations.
Luis Gerardo Meneses Hernandez - PeerSpot reviewer
Software developer at Apps2Go TECH
Sep 2, 2024
Configuring the project to be used in Appium is a little bit tedious.
Siddartha Rao - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at Deloitte India (Offices of the US)
Sep 30, 2022
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.
Learn what your peers think about Appium. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: June 2026.
900,228 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Abhishek-Tiwari - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Associate at PwC
Sep 28, 2022
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.
Vignesh Venkatesan - PeerSpot reviewer
SDET at Trimble Inc
Jun 18, 2024
It breaks down.
VT
Senior Test Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Oct 12, 2022
The user interface needs improvement because there are issues when setting up environment variables.
Alona Tupchei - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineering manager I - Quality at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Sep 28, 2022
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.
OC
Sr Data Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Sep 26, 2022
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.
Prakash-G - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Automation Engineer at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Sep 19, 2022
Support-wise, it could be better.
Eko Kristianto - PeerSpot reviewer
IT consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Sep 8, 2022
I rarely use Appium nowadays because I'm now at the managerial level, but the last time I used it, whenever I selected and clicked on an element, Appium was very slow. I tried to debug it, but I still couldn't find the problem, so this is an area for improvement in the solution. Another area for improvement lies with the connector and server. For example, the effort to get into the local machine sometimes causes the emulator to become slow, which then leads to failure in testing, and this is the usual issue I've encountered from Appium. An additional feature I'd like added to Appium in its next release is being able to do automation in iOS without using XPath and the name of the element. In Xcode, you can use previous UI tests for detecting elements, but in Appium, you have to use Xpath and the element name instead of being able to directly put the X-UiPath, which is what you can do in Xcode. In iOS as well, sometimes the element doesn't have a name or a path. Sometimes, there's also no element.