Selenium vs Web Platform Tests
Selenium
selenium.devWeb Platform Tests
web-platform-tests.orgSide by side
| Figure | Selenium | Web Platform Tests |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Cross-Browser Testing Software | 8.4 (#12) | 7.5 (#22) |
| Spec score · Browser Testing Software | 8.4 (#17) | 7.5 (#32) |
| Purpose | Selenium is a suite of tools for automating web browsers, primarily for testing web applications. | Web Platform Tests is a cross-browser test suite for the Web platform, intended to help browser projects check compatibility across implementations. |
| Security | The Grid guide warns that Grid must be protected from external access with appropriate firewall permissions because exposure can allow access to infrastructure, internal apps and files, or custom binary execution. | The project documentation says SSL certificates for HTTPS-enabled domains are obtained through Let’s Encrypt. |
Plans
In their own words
Selenium
Selenium is a free suite of tools for automating web browsers, primarily to test web applications. WebDriver provides language bindings for controlling browsers locally or remotely, and is a W3C Recommendation. The main project supports.NET/C#, Ruby, Java, Python, and JavaScript. Selenium IDE is a browser add-on for recording and replaying interactions in Chrome, Firefox, and Edge. For distributed tests, Selenium Grid spreads work across machines and combinations of browsers and operating systems. Grid offers Standalone, Hub and Node, and Distributed configurations; Docker and Kubernetes deployment resources are also linked. Selenium Manager can discover, download, and cache browser releases and drivers. Documentation covers browser-specific functionality for Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari, and names GitHub Actions and Jenkins as CI/CD examples. Selenium began in 2004 at ThoughtWorks in Chicago. Grid has no authentication by default, and the project advises restricting external access and placing it behind a secure network. The latest Opera driver functionality is not supported, and that driver is officially unsupported. Selenium costs nothing.
Web Platform Tests
Web Platform Tests is an open-source suite for checking web platform compatibility across browser implementations. Anyone can run tests through the public wpt.live deployment in an internet-enabled browser, or clone the suite for local use on Linux, macOS, or Windows. The suite includes JavaScript API, rendering, crash, WebDriver, and manual tests. Its command-line `wpt` tool runs tests in a selected browser and can produce machine-readable JSON reports and screenshots. It can also save and load expected results for continuous integration and regression tracking. Regularly collected results from a range of browsers are archived at wpt.fyi. Local setup requires Python 3.9 or later and configuration of test domains in the system hosts file. Running tests in multiple browser processes may make results less deterministic and add noise compared with the default single-process mode. The project is free and open source, and documents Windows, macOS, and Linux setup.