BrowserStack Live vs TestCafe
BrowserStack Live
browserstack.com
TestCafe
testcafe.ioSide by side
| Figure | BrowserStack Live | TestCafe |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $12.50/mo | $20/mo |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | Yes |
| Android | Yes | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 6 | 4 |
| Spec score · Cross-Browser Testing Software | 8.4 (#9) | 8.8 (#2) |
| Audience | BrowserStack presents Live for QA teams, developers, and company-wide testing teams. | The site describes Personal as suited to individual users and low-volume testing, Team to medium-sized teams or businesses, and Enterprise to large-scale companies. |
| Founded | 2011 | 1998 |
| Integrations | BrowserStack lists integrations including Jenkins, Cypress, Selenium, and Jira for its testing products. | The CI guide lists AppVeyor, Azure DevOps, Bitbucket Pipelines, CircleCI, GitHub Actions, GitLab, Jenkins, TeamCity, Travis, BrowserStack, LambdaTest, and Sauce Labs. |
| Support | The pricing page lists 24/7 active email support for the Desktop plan. | The Personal plan has community support only, while the Team plan includes dedicated support. |
Plans
BrowserStack Live
- Freelancer$12.50 a month
- Desktop$29 a month
- Desktop & Mobile$39 a month
- Team$150 a month
- Team Pro$249 a month
- EnterprisePriced on request
TestCafe
- TestCafe frameworkFree
- Personal$20 a month
- Team$50 a month
- EnterprisePriced on request
In their own words
BrowserStack Live
BrowserStack Live is a cloud-based manual testing platform for interactively testing and debugging websites and web apps on real devices and browsers. It supports new and older versions of Edge, Safari, Chrome, Internet Explorer and Firefox, with access to real Windows, macOS, Android and iOS devices. Teams can test internal development or staging sites, including sites behind firewalls, without setup or configuration.
Live lists real-time debugging with pre-installed developer tools and multi-device testing on up to four real devices. A session can use two real mobile devices simultaneously, or users can run two sessions in separate browser tabs. BrowserStack says physical devices and desktop virtual machines are wiped after each session. It lists integrations including Jenkins, Cypress, Selenium and Jira for its testing products, and states it is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant and encrypts communications with HTTPS/TLS. The free trial is limited to 30 minutes and has limited browser access. Annual paid plans include Freelancer at $12.50 a month, Desktop at $29 a month and Desktop & Mobile at $39 a month.
TestCafe
TestCafe is a free, open-source test runner and end-to-end framework for web testing. Tests can be written in JavaScript or TypeScript, or recorded in a browser with TestCafe Studio. The runner works in modern browsers locally or remotely and supports concurrent runs across browsers. It can also switch between iframes and multiple browser windows to cover interactions across those contexts.
The framework includes server-side API testing tools for standalone API tests or functional tests. Other capabilities include automated waiting, authentication roles, hooks, request mocking, and debugging mode. Its CI guide lists services including GitHub Actions, GitLab, Jenkins, Azure DevOps, and CircleCI, plus BrowserStack, LambdaTest, and Sauce Labs. Installation is available through npm, with a Docker image for CI/CD pipelines. After each run, TestCafe says it deletes browser cookies, clears storage, and reloads the page; parallel runs use separate sandboxed environments. The framework is MIT-licensed. Paid Dashboard plans have test-run quotas, but those do not limit the open-source runner.