Pure Test vs Rstest

Pure Test is a free, minimal test runner for projects using JavaScript runtimes and browsers. It supports Node.js, Deno, Bun, Cloudflare Workers, and browsers, and its API includes test suites, assertions, lifecycle hooks, spies, fake timers, and retry and timeout options. The CLI provides multiple reporters, test filters, file watching, sharding, and fail-fast execution. For CI, `--shard` splits test files across jobs and exits cleanly when a shard has no files. TypeScript test discovery requires `--ts` on Node.js; it is automatic on Deno and Bun. A Deno adapter registers tests as `Deno.test()` calls for use with `deno test` and its filtering and IDE workflows. The README includes migration guides for Jest and Vitest and notes compatibility with common mock methods. Pure Test does not isolate tests, so lifecycle hooks are recommended for managing state. The project is beta, and its APIs may change. It is Apache-2.0 licensed, with no paid plans stated.

Rstest is a free, open-source testing framework for JavaScript and TypeScript, built on Rsbuild and Rspack. It bundles tests through Rspack’s dependency-graph build process and applies SWC transforms. Projects can reuse configuration from Rsbuild, Rslib, or Rspack, including aliases, transforms, and plugins. Tests run in Node.js, simulated DOM environments with jsdom or happy-dom, and real browsers. Browser Mode uses Playwright to run tests in Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit; an integration supports end-to-end tests against local, preview, or deployed URLs. Rstest can also load Module Federation remotes in Node, JSDOM, and Browser Mode. Its built-in tools include Jest-compatible assertions, snapshots, mocks, spies, lifecycle hooks, file-level isolation, reporters, filtering, and coverage reporting. For CI, it supports multi-project testing, sharding, blob report merging, and coverage thresholds. The Rstack VS Code extension lets users browse, run, and debug tests. The quick start requires Node.js 20.19.0 or newer, and recommends the Node.js LTS version. Rstest is released under the MIT license.