Cypress vs Percy

Cypress is a front-end testing tool for web applications, combining an open-source Cypress App with the cloud-based Cypress Cloud service. The App supports end-to-end and component testing, launching and controlling real browsers from Chrome-family browsers and Firefox; WebKit is experimental. For debugging, it offers time-travel snapshots, readable errors, stack traces, automatic waiting, and network stubbing. Cypress Cloud stores recorded CI test runs and adds debugging, analytics, and orchestration for teams. It connects with GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Jira, and its MCP works with AI coding assistants including Claude, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot. The Starter plan costs nothing and includes 10 users, 500 test results per month, 100 prompt executions per month, and 30-day access to paid features. Team costs $67 a month, billed annually at $799. Cypress says Cloud test content is stored in the United States, and material in public projects is publicly accessible. It also says its AI models are not trained on customer data.

Percy automates visual testing by capturing DOM snapshots and assets, rendering them across browsers, and comparing results with earlier snapshots to flag visual changes. Responsive checks use configurable widths, while snapshot stabilization freezes animations and other dynamic elements to reduce false positives. Percy groups snapshots into the same build when tests run in separate processes or on different machines. Its review workflow includes status updates, notifications, comments, comparisons, and automatic diff matching. Listed integrations include GitHub, GitLab, Slack, Storybook, WebdriverIO, and Jenkins. Documented frameworks include Selenium, Playwright, Cypress, Puppeteer, Ember, Appium, and others. Percy documentation describes testing across real devices and desktop and mobile browsers. The free plan includes 5,000 screenshots per month, unlimited users, and unlimited projects. Desktop costs $199 a month, billed annually, for 10,000 screenshots per month; Desktop & Mobile costs $599 a month, billed annually, for 25,000 screenshots per month. Paid plans have fixed screenshot allowances, and additional usage is charged at the overage rate. Enterprise pricing is custom and unlisted.