fast-check vs PropEr
fast-check
fast-check.devPropEr
proper-testing.github.ioSide by side
| Figure | fast-check | PropEr |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Property-Based Testing Tools | 8.9 (#1) | 7.5 (#14) |
| Integrations | The ecosystem lists official integrations for AVA, Jest, and Vitest, along with connectors for libraries such as Zod and io-ts. | The user guide explains using PropEr with EUnit and describes handling a shared ?LET macro and captured output. |
| Properties | Properties express predicates that must remain true for values produced by one or more arbitraries. | Properties are written using Erlang expressions with predefined macros. |
| Purpose | fast-check is a property-based testing library for JavaScript and TypeScript that generates inputs, runs assertions over many cases, and shrinks failures to smaller counterexamples. | PropEr is a tool for automated, semi-random, property-based testing of Erlang programs. |
| Support | The project invites code and non-code contributions, community help, and financial support through GitHub Sponsors or OpenCollective. | The developers invite comments, suggestions, feature requests, bug reports, patches, and other contributions through the project website, GitHub, or email. |
Plans
In their own words
fast-check
fast-check is a property-based testing library for JavaScript and TypeScript. It generates inputs and checks expected behavior across many cases, then reduces a failure to a smaller counterexample to help investigate it. Tests combine arbitraries that create values, properties that describe behavior, runners that execute checks, and plugins that extend runners. It works with Jest, Mocha, Vitest, Ava, Bun, Deno, the Node.js test runner, and other test runners. Runs can be configured with seeds, generated-value sizes, time limits, and result reporting globally or per assertion. fast-check supports stateful testing and reproducible failures; its project also describes fuzzing and generative testing for issues such as race conditions and prototype poisoning. The project is open source under the MIT license, and the listed plan is free. Version 5.x requires Node.js 22.12.0 or later and ECMAScript 2025; TypeScript 5.8 or later is optional.
PropEr
PropEr is a free, open-source testing tool for Erlang programs. It performs automated, semi-random property-based testing and can generate input data from Erlang type declarations. Functions can be tested automatically from information in their Erlang specifications, while properties are written as Erlang expressions with predefined macros. PropEr also supports model-based random testing for stateful systems and targeted property-based testing using search-based techniques. Failing cases can be shrunk, and the project supports EUnit and Common Test. Constraints that Erlang’s type language cannot express can be handled with custom generators; filtering may keep trying random values until one passes. The generator language differs from Erlang’s type language for list expressions, including support for particular list lengths and element types. PropEr is self-hosted, supports Erlang, and is distributed under GPL version 3 or later. The guide describes installation from GitHub source, with make, or through Homebrew.