Appium vs BrowserStack Automate
Appium
appium.io
BrowserStack Automate
browserstack.comSide by side
| Figure | Appium | BrowserStack Automate |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | $59/mo |
| Free plan | — | — |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| iOS | Yes | Yes |
| Android | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 0 | 4 |
| Spec score · Testing Automation Software | 8.1 (#9) | 8.7 (#5) |
| Spec score · Testing And Qa | 8.1 (#12) | 8.7 (#4) |
| Spec score · GUI Testing Software | 8.1 (#13) | 8.7 (#5) |
| Spec score · Functional Testing Software | 8.1 (#17) | 8.7 (#6) |
| Spec score · Regression Testing Software | 8.1 (#13) | 8.7 (#9) |
| Spec score · Automated Testing | 8.1 (#16) | 8.7 (#9) |
| Spec score · Mobile App Testing Software | 8.2 (#16) | 8.6 (#8) |
| Spec score · End-to-End Testing Software | 8.1 (#15) | 8.7 (#5) |
| Spec score · Mobile Device Testing Software | 8.1 (#10) | 8.6 (#2) |
| Purpose | Appium is an open-source project and ecosystem of software for UI automation across mobile, browser, desktop, TV and other platforms. | Automate provides a fully managed automation grid for testing across physical desktop, iOS, and Android devices. |
| Security | Appium recommends running its server locally or within a protected internal network, avoiding untrusted users and not exposing its ports to the wider internet. | BrowserStack says it is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant and that its compliance covers its data centers and platform. |
Plans
BrowserStack Automate
- Chrome$59 a month
- Desktop & Mobile$175 a month
- Desktop & Mobile$175 a month
- Desktop & Mobile Pro$225 a month
In their own words
BrowserStack Automate
BrowserStack Automate provides a managed automation grid for testing websites and apps across physical desktop, iOS and Android devices. It supports more than 3,500 real desktop and mobile browser combinations and lists Selenium, Playwright, Puppeteer, Cypress and JavaScript framework support. Tests can run in parallel across hundreds or thousands of browsers, although the listed plans show one parallel test by default. BrowserStack Local securely connects internal staging environments to BrowserStack Cloud. Reports can include video, screenshots, framework logs, CI console logs, network logs and AI-driven failure analysis. Other listed capabilities include microphone audio injection, network simulation, Apple Pay workflows, localization settings, physical SIM testing and camera image injection. Integrations include Jenkins, Jira, Slack, Appium and multiple CI/CD tools. Deployment options are cloud and self-hosted. There is a free trial but no free plan; the Chrome plan costs $59 a month, billed annually. BrowserStack says its platform is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant and its privacy policy complies with GDPR.