Behat vs pytest-bdd

Behat is free, open-source software for writing executable specifications in plain language on Linux. It is the PHP implementation of Cucumber and runs Gherkin feature files. Those files can describe complete application behavior and be exercised through browser automation, HTTP API calls, shell commands, databases, filesystems, or PHP code. Behat is intended to work with any PHP framework or without one. Installation uses Composer or a PHAR executable, both running with PHP. An extension system can expand or replace nearly any part of the tool, with extensions covering framework integrations, browser automation, test reporting, and data fixtures. Behat does not provide its own assertion tool, so an external assertion library is needed. It supports current PHP and third-party dependency versions; Symfony 8 support begins with Behat 4.0. Each major version receives security fixes for 24 months after the next major release.

pytest-bdd is a Python package for automating requirements tests with behavior-driven development. It implements a subset of Gherkin and runs scenarios as pytest tests, without a separate test runner. Feature steps can reuse pytest fixtures through dependency injection, and step definitions can accept arguments parsed as strings, with parse or cfparse formats, or by regular expression. The scenarios helper can bind scenarios from feature files and folders, including recursive folder discovery. Scenario outlines support parameterized cases and tagged example tables; step functions can also receive Gherkin data tables as row lists and docstrings as strings. For browser tests, the documented example uses pytest-splinter to provide a browser fixture. Installation is via `pip install pytest-bdd`. The package is open source under the MIT License, free at free, and requires Python 3.10 or newer. Listed platforms are Linux, macOS, and Windows.