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Appium vs SmartBear TestComplete comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on May 21, 2025

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
Ranking in Regression Testing Tools
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
Mobile Development Platforms (9th)
SmartBear TestComplete
Ranking in Regression Testing Tools
5th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
Functional Testing Tools (7th), Test Automation Tools (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Regression Testing Tools category, the mindshare of Appium is 2.1%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SmartBear TestComplete is 10.4%, up from 9.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Regression Testing Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SmartBear TestComplete10.4%
Appium2.1%
Other87.5%
Regression Testing Tools
 

Featured Reviews

AS
Independent consultant, at OpenText
Efficient mobile testing with intuitive emulation capabilities and a user-friendly interface
Initial setup for Appium (especially for iOS) is not beginner-friendly.Consumes too much of your host machine's resources, potentially slowing down the machine.Appium Inspector often lacks deep insight or crashes with certain app builds. Improve test flakiness by intelligently selecting robust self-healing locators,simplified installers, better documentation, GUI-based config management,smart wait mechanisms and better failure logs.
Prakhar Goel - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Test Lead at Emerson
Used for integration automation, user-based automation, and web automation
The solution's most valuable features are the drag-and-drop feature, keyword-driven approach, and reusability of the scripts. The solution has introduced a new feature that helps us identify objects we cannot normally identify. It gives you a fair idea of objects, resolving the object recognition issue. The solution can be used to perform different tests on different machines.

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."
"Currently, most people use Appium as automation software, and I haven't found any other tool that's more powerful than Appium."
"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."
"The most valuable features of Appium are the in-built functionality, which we can use in our code. For example, move back, move front, navigate one page before, and navigate one page ahead. You can do this by using the in-built functions from Appium."
"The solution is easy to use."
"It has great documentation and excellent community support."
"When it comes to mobile automation, I recommend this solution because of its performance, and scalability over the competition."
"This is the best test automation tool for any mobile test automation engineer."
"Customer Service: It's good. Technical Support: It's good."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is regression testing tools."
"The initial set-up was exceedingly simple."
"We already have the UI smoke test and have integrated to our build system, which runs each day for multiple versions of the product and saves us a lot of time."
"Selenium integration."
"The product is stable for what we are currently using it for, and it is sufficient for us."
"I like the cross browser compatibility, as it saves a lot of time re-writing scripts to accommodate different browsers."
"It helped to automate all the possible functional test cases which I previously used to do by manual testing."
 

Cons

"Support-wise, it could be better."
"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."
"Appium can improve when the case fails, there should be a feature where you can generate the report from Appium."
"The setup and installation were a problem for us at first."
"I'm facing a lot of issues with my new juniors when they set up Appium for iOS."
"When doing mobile testing Appium is difficult as you can't use it for mobile testing in virtual machines."
"It should provide reliable and promising executions every time without any interruptions and avoiding any synchronization issues."
"Installation of this particular tool is tedious, and it gives you a good number of challenges at times."
"I pay for support and maintenance; having used the “support” functions through online forums, I can say there is room for improvement."
"During the distribution of our regression test cases, the control IDs are not always recognized correctly."
"SmartBear products generally have a weak link when it comes to integration with other test management tools like Inflectra."
"The licensing costs are a little bit high and should be reduced."
"Right now, the product only supports Windows."
"The test object repository needs to be improved."
"TestComplete gives support to do requests to a SOAP web service but has no support to do HTTP requests on Restful services."
"It is very hard to read the test log generated by TestComplete Executor if the log file is very big. TestComplete Executor is a small tool for just running the TestComplete test framework (not for developing)."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is an open source solution so it does not cost anything for licensing or otherwise."
"Appium is free and open-source."
"The price is good for people to be able to make a favorable decision for the value."
"The pricing of Appium is fine."
"The solution is open-source."
"Appium is open source; we can use it for free."
"There is no license for this solution because it is open-source."
"The solution is open source so it is free."
"Our ROI is about $10,000 a year."
"The pricing is a little above average — it could be lower."
"SmartBear TestComplete is an expensive tool."
"TestComplete now have come up with three modules (Web, Desktop & Mobile), so based on the type of product for automation, it is adequate to purchase the required module."
"The product is becoming more and more expensive."
"We have a TestComplete 12 license."
"This is a pay-per-use service that is not expensive, and cost-efficient if you have a small team."
"The license price for a physical machine is cheap, and for virtual machine, it is very expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Construction Company
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 Business23
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise32
 

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 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 needs improvement with Appium?
The deployment process and configuration are quite complex and require improvement. Additionally, the wait time functionality could be enhanced as I experienced failures with longer wait times.
What do you like most about SmartBear TestComplete?
TestComplete has strong reporting capabilities. The reports they generate are really good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SmartBear TestComplete?
I am not involved in pricing or licensing; our management team handles these aspects.
What needs improvement with SmartBear TestComplete?
While using SmartBear TestComplete, we are fine with the current capabilities, however, it would be beneficial to improve some performance aspects, especially the image comparison feature. Occasion...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nuvizz, Coupa Software, Eventbrite, Evernote
Cisco, J.P. Morgan, Boeing, McAfee, EMC, Intuit, and Thomson Reuters.
Find out what your peers are saying about Appium vs. SmartBear TestComplete and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,438 professionals have used our research since 2012.