Pest vs PHPUnit
Pest
pestphp.com
PHPUnit
phpunit.deSide by side
| Figure | Pest | PHPUnit |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Unit Testing | 8.3 (#5) | 8.4 (#2) |
| Spec score · Unit Testing Frameworks | 8.2 (#7) | 8.3 (#5) |
| PHP requirement | Pest 5 requires PHP 8.4 or greater and is built on PHPUnit 13. | PHPUnit 13 requires PHP 8.4 or later. |
| Purpose | Pest is a PHP testing framework for developers and AI agents. | PHPUnit is a testing framework for PHP. |
| Security | The homepage shows a security architecture testing preset, but the opened maker pages did not state a security certification or compliance standard. | The getting-started page links to documentation for verifying PHPUnit PHAR releases. |
| Support policy | Pest says bug fixes for outdated major versions are available for 12 months after the latest version's release, with no fixed resolution time or guaranteed fix for every issue. | PHPUnit 13 bugfix support is listed through February 4, 2028, and its end-of-life date is to be determined. |
Plans
In their own words
Pest
Pest is a free PHP testing framework for developers and AI agents, installed in a PHP project as a Composer development dependency. Pest 5 requires PHP 8.4 or later. It supports parallel execution, coverage, mutation and snapshot testing, profiling, architectural testing and browser testing. Its Browser plugin uses Playwright for page interactions, while the Agent plugin lets coding agents run one-off application checks and can drive a real browser when the Browser plugin is installed. Pest Evals combines deterministic tests with AI-powered scorers for evaluating LLM output. The Tia Engine reruns tests affected by recent changes and requires PCOV or Xdebug as a coverage driver. Pest 5 includes PHPStan and Rector plugins; team-maintained plugins include Faker, Laravel and Livewire. JetBrains maintains the PhpStorm plugin, included by default since version 2023.3. Pest supports parameterized cases but does not include built-in mocks. Its maintainers say bug fixes for outdated major versions are available for 12 months after the latest version's release, without a guaranteed resolution time or fix for every issue.
PHPUnit
PHPUnit is a free testing framework for PHP, with a command-line runner for running tests and selecting test suites. It covers assertions for return values, exceptions, side effects, output, files, JSON, XML, and error-log output. Tests can be organized through filesystem structure or XML configuration and can use data providers, dependencies, stubs, and mock objects. The framework documents code coverage reports in HTML and JSONL formats, plus JUnit and TeamCity logging configuration. For tests that fail intermittently, PHPUnit supports repeating and retrying runs through attributes and command-line options. Installation is available as a PHAR or as a Composer development dependency. PHPUnit 13 is the current stable major version and requires PHP 8.4 or later. Bug-fix support for that version runs through February 4, 2028; its end-of-life date is undetermined. Documentation is available for versions 8.5 through 13.4. PHPUnit supports Linux, macOS, Windows, and self-hosted use.