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Sauce Labs vs k6 Open Source 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

k6 Open Source
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Load Testing Tools (9th), Regression Testing Tools (10th)
Sauce Labs
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
113
Ranking in other categories
Functional Testing Tools (12th), Test Automation Tools (15th)
 

Featured Reviews

NalinGoonawardana - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers good scalability and has the ability to integrate with various systems and services
One area where k6 could improve is by introducing a GUI similar to JMeter. While k6 is a powerful tool for performance testing, it leans heavily towards coding. Having a GUI, even if it is a low-code approach, could make it more accessible to a broader audience. It would be beneficial to strike a balance where basic tasks can be performed graphically through a user-friendly interface, while still allowing the flexibility for more complex operations through code, similar to how JMeter operates. This could enhance the user experience and make k6 more approachable for those who may not be as comfortable with scripting.
Joel Alonzo - PeerSpot reviewer
Metrics about testing across the company are easily accessible, and it's easy to get teams up and running
Multi-domain SSO is a big concern for us right now, especially as we've been merged into a larger company. I suddenly have teams coming from 20 different domains, and because the main master Sauce Labs account is locked down to one SSO domain, there are teams that can't run a test right now. I've heard they're working on a solution and they've been very communicative with us about it. A solution to that would help us a lot. The other issue is that when you're behind a corporate proxy and inside a corporate network, it's a nightmare in general. And the problem that we've come up against over and over again is that a lot of our network staff don't want to open up giant CIDR blocks to internal traffic. Opening it up to one endpoint which is Sauce Labs, through a little API is perfectly fine. That's one IP address and it's no big deal. But for their virtual machines they have one jump box and that jump box contains an entire CIDR block that changes each time the tunnel starts up. In other words, if every call went into one IP and that got bounced back to a load balancer or net gateway, that would help a lot too. When I go to the network team and say, "Hey, we're using a product, a piece of software, and I need an entire CIDR block opened," the first and almost eternal response to that will be "absolutely not." Getting things set up and running is always going to be a bit of a struggle within any corporate environment. Most of that is not Sauce Labs' fault, but the things I just mentioned are things they could do to help deal with that struggle.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The standout feature of k6 is its strong focus on API performance testing."
"The tool's big advantage is that it is more performance-test oriented for experienced testers who know what they are doing. In a normal working setup, performance engineers frequently work with DevOps and development teams. For these teams, k6 Open Source's syntax is much simpler and easier to understand and apply in the working process."
"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."
"They offer a large number of devices and browser/operating system combinations for real device tests"
"Supplying devices to a testing team of possibly close to one thousand testers and developers is a great undertaking but Sauce Labs has made this very easy and a welcomed solution."
"From an infrastructure support perspective, the number of VMs, browsers installations and versions that we would be maintaining without Sauce Labs would be a lot. This includes not only the infrastructure costs, but also the maintenance costs and people's time. The labor cost associated with maintaining all of that would be considerably high. In terms of efficiency, having concurrent VMs with various browser combinations available has allowed us to run multiple executions by all our teams."
"It has significantly enhanced our testing accuracy by approximately 50%."
"Sauce Labs is optimized for automation and integration with the major CI/CD platforms and developer tools. We have an integration with App Center that we're working on. They have a storage API that lets us retrieve APK and IPA, iOS and Android builds off the phone, so that we can continue testing with CI/CD. They integrate with Jenkins, and Jenkins is the main CI/CD."
"The most critical thing is that this software aligns with our Agile and DevOps way of doing things. It integrates with kickoff scripts through DevOps."
"The custom capabilities that can be provided to Sauce Labs VMs during automated testing sessions are a valuable option for experimental or niche testing."
 

Cons

"One area where k6 could improve is by introducing a GUI similar to JMeter."
"We encountered minor issues with stability from time to time but Sauce Labs continues to make improvements."
"I may not know what should be improved on the platform, but I think it could offer a greater variety of testing solutions. I know there might be competing solutions that cover more things I'm unaware of, and it could expand a bit more. We've done a lot of automated testing scenarios, and that's all the rage these days, so I think Sauce Labs could look at potential ways to improve and cover other scenarios."
"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."
"The pricing model of Sauce Labs could be more flexible. Sauce Labs has just one price for the type of solution and a set number of devices. Other solutions have a fee for the base solution and an additional cost per device. If you're a smaller organization, you have to consider your needs. Some smaller companies still need to test various devices, so my advice is to start small and scale up as needed. We had initially planned to start big, but that would have been a big waste."
"This product is not super scalable, because you have a very specific number of VMs that you can use."
"The ability to configure the memory and CPU for the test machines should be included."
"Sauce Labs' dashboard could be improved by adding more filters and allowing more customization options. There was one instance where the dashboard on the Sauce Labs UI didn't meet our requirements, so we had to use the Sauce Labs API to create some apps and dashboards on our own. The API endpoints could be a little more robust and customizable."
"I would like for there to be more detail in regards to the quality of our code i.e. how many failures occurred, how many passed based on industry standard metrics, etc."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Compared with other services, Sauce Labs is a bit expensive."
"With respect to pricing, they did a bundled discount because we went with Sauce Labs for both mobile and browser. They were very competitive on pricing and provided a bundle discount for us as a larger customer."
"We have an enterprise account; it has worked great for our needs."
"Go ahead please. Try it at a smaller scale."
"It is an expensive tool."
"We did initially go with Sauce Labs because of the pricing and integration."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Media Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
15%
Retailer
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about k6 Open Source?
The standout feature of k6 is its strong focus on API performance testing.
What needs improvement with k6 Open Source?
One area where k6 could improve is by introducing a GUI similar to JMeter. While k6 is a powerful tool for performance testing, it leans heavily towards coding. Having a GUI, even if it is a low-co...
What is your primary use case for k6 Open Source?
k6 Open Source is a powerful tool, especially for API-level performance testing. Its integration capabilities and ease of use make it promising for a wider audience.
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

 

Also Known As

Load Impact
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

rackspace, salesforce.com, IBM, servicenow, Nasdaq, JWT
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 Sauce Labs vs. k6 Open Source and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.