Pest vs Tape
Pest
pestphp.comTape
github.comSide by side
| Figure | Pest | Tape |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 0 |
| Spec score · Unit Testing | 8.3 (#5) | 6.5 (#24) |
| Install | Pest is installed in a PHP project as a Composer development dependency. | The README recommends installing Tape with `npm install tape --save-dev`. |
| Integrations | Pest's team-maintained plugins include Faker, Laravel, and Livewire. | The README lists companion modules for TAP reporters, including tap-spec, tap-dot, faucet, tap-json, and tap-xunit. |
| Purpose | Pest is a PHP testing framework for developers and AI agents. | Tape is a TAP-producing test harness for Node.js and browsers. |
| Security | The homepage shows a security architecture testing preset, but the opened maker pages did not state a security certification or compliance standard. | The repository links a security policy, but the opened policy link did not show separate security or compliance claims. |
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 Its maintainers say bug fixes for outdated major versions are available for 12 months after the latest version's release, without a guaranteed resolution time or fix for every issue.