Best open source testing tools
short list 📃

More business leaders and entrepreneurs use software products to run and manage their businesses effectively and drive impressive results.

With the benefits of software products, companies can optimize traditional business activities and automate certain tasks that ultimately increase productivity. That’s where free software testing tools come into play to make sure the developed software products work as expected.

However, testing your software products is a tedious and time-consuming process that brings a wide variety of challenges. But, writing and maintaining tests is hard work as well. Only by leveraging automation testing tools and repositories can you make the QA process as painless as possible.

Companies committing to open source testing tools discover the considerable advantages they hold: full visibility into the code base, thriving community support with attentive code review, no licensing fees, high flexibility and better security. Additionally, they get software products off the ground faster and have absolute confidence that they function as expected.

Having that in mind, we have provided our shortlist of 14 popular open-source testing tools and repositories to discover what they can do for your testing process.

Overviews of the 14 best open source testing tools and repositories

Let us review these open source testing tools to help you learn more about their key features and testing type:

CodeceptJS

Equipped with a custom BDD-style syntax, CodeceptJS open source testing tool allows QA teams to create scenario-driven tests – even a non-technical team member can write tests effectively as well as gauge automation tests. This significantly speeds up the testing process and increases productivity. Additionally, the configuration allows running tests with well-known libraries, including Nighmatch, Puppeteer, Protractor, and WebDriver.

Key features:

• It provides well-written documentation and easy installation.
• It allows teams to produce readable code and maintain it with ease.
• It enables teams to create pageobjects, helpers, multiple test executions, etc.

Best suited for:

• API testing
• e2e testing

Codeception

Being a full-stack PHP-based testing framework, Codeception open source test automation tool allows QA teams to create and execute a plethora of tests, including acceptance, functional, and even unit ones on different browsers, using the Selenium Web Driver. Additionally, tests written as a set of user actions enable them to make sure they develop and ship the right product.

Key features:

• It supports Symfony, Laravel, Zend Framework, Yii, Phalcon technologies to execute tests inside a PHP framework.
• It allows taking snapshots if there is a need to detect and compare data changes in the QA process.
• It provides flexible commands to test the structure and data of JSON and XML responses over HTTP or inside a framework.

Best suited for:

• Unit Testing
• Acceptance testing
• Functional testing
• API testing
• Implementation of BDD testing

Cucumber

Cucumber is known as a BDD-based test automation framework applied when writing acceptance tests to test web applications. With a focus on the end-user experience, it allows QA teams to test the system rather than testing the particular piece of test automation code. What’s more, automated acceptance tests, functional requirements, and software documentation can be written in one format that helps even non-technical specialists to be on the same page during the development process.

Key features:

• It allows non-technical specialists to produce executable specifications.
• It supports multiple programming languages and helps software engineers to produce clear test cases for variable project implementations.
• It provides agile-driven workflow and speeds up development.

Best suited for:

• Acceptance testing
• Functional testing
• Implementation of BDD testing

Playwright

Microsoft’s NodeJS-based package allows QA teams to automate browser-based tasks. With headless mode, Playwright open source test automation tool speeds up test execution by decreasing CPU utilization and eliminating UI updates. Additionally, this testing tool is equipped with screenshots auto-making to debug failed tests and generates detailed html reports.

Key features:

• It provides cross-browser web automation and any modern platform integration.
• It functions without access to the code base.
• It has complete and user-friendly documentation to start with.

Best suited for:

• Cross-browser testing
• E2E testing
• Web testing
• Mobile testing
• API testing
• Parallel testing

Webdriver.io

Written in JavaScript, Webdriver.io test automation framework supports many assertion libraries, including Jasmine, Mocha, etc. It provides customization possibilities by allowing QA teams to combine complicated commands and implement custom functions. The tests executed on WebDriver.io are simple and concise.

Key features:

• It offers a simple installation process.
• It provides a plethora of third-party plugins to meet any needs in the testing process.
• It has a command-line interface (CLI) and a very flexible configuration.

Best suited for:

• Mobile testing
• Web testing
• Unit testing
• Functional testing

RSpec

Written in Ruby, RSpec test automation framework focuses on how the application or its individual components behave rather than function. Many testing frameworks in other programming languages adopt its syntax. Teams can write expressive test cases even if they are not fluent Ruby developers. However, most of the QA engineers are keen on using Gauge test automation framework.

Key features:

• It enables teams to create easy-to-read tests.
• It provides test creation using a matrix of different scenarios with ease through shared contexts.
• It offers simple and intuitive stubbing and verifying method calls.

Best suited for:

• Unit testing
• Integration testing
• Implementation of BDD testing

SoapUI

With a simple and intuitive interface, SoapUI enables QA teams to produce functional API tests and quickly get software products to market with little hassle. Drag and drop, point and pick features with advanced scripting significantly accelerate the testing process. Additionally, it prevents SQL injection when performing complete security testing.

Key features:

• It allows teams to work in QA, Dev, and Production environment.
• It has the ability to use pre-written test scripts used for different projects.
• It provides asynchronous API calls.

Best suited for:

• API testing
• Functional testing
• Load testing
• Compliance testing
• Website testing

Selenium

With its cross-browser support and rich feature set, Selenium software test automation framework is a great tool for testing web applications. Being a portable framework, it directly interacts with supported browsers and can be integrated with a large number of third-party tools, including a test management tool and other platforms. This significantly extends test automation functionality and speeds up the testing process.

Key features:

• It provides a complete toolset to meet any test automation need.
• It has great community support.
• It offers a huge library of 3rd party plugins.

Best suited for:

• Performance testing
• Integration testing
• End-to-end testing
• Regression testing

Appium

With full access to back-end APIs and code base, Appium test automation framework allows teams to test various types of mobile apps and keep control under databases. Additionally, QA teams can convert manual test cases to automated scripts and don’t need to install Appium on mobile devices to work with.

Key features:

• It provides excellent integration capabilities
• It supports Support real devices, emulators, and simulators to produce reliable test results.
• Equipped with record and playback options and compatible with any of the testing frameworks, it accelerates efforts in the QA process.

Best suited for:

• Web testing
• Mobile testing

 JUnit

Written in Java, JUnit open source test automation tool allows software engineers to create and execute repeatable regression tests in Java. It exemplifies the effectiveness of Java testing tools in software development. Incorporating Java testing frameworks like JUnit significantly enhances the accuracy and efficiency of the testing process. Teams can keep their code organized, detect and fix errors. Additionally, they can capture and summarize test failures with ease.

Key features:

• It enables teams to write multiple tests in various programming languages.
• It allows teams to create a test suite with different test cases that can be run together.
• It includes annotations and a built-in test reports feature that delivers information about the executed tests.

Best suited for:

• Unit testing
• Integration testing
• Functional testing
• Regression testing

TestNG

TestNG test automation framework allows QA and Dev teams to write test cases in Java and organize them tests in a structured way. It also enables them to keep control over the test case execution. Utilizing Java testing frameworks like TestNG, teams can further streamline their testing process. Additionally, they can group test cases and execute the groups to perform more complex automation testing.

Key features:

• It is equipped with more powerful functionality, including annotations, grouping, sequencing and parametrizing.
• It enables QA engineers to group test cases with ease.
• It provides parallel testing.

Best suited for:

• Unit testing
• Functional testing
• End to End testing
• Regression testing
• Integration testing

Pytest

Written in Python, Pytest open source test automation tool supports simple or complex text code to test UIs, APIs, and databases, etc. With rich plugins and built-in features, this open source testing tool allows executing tests in parallel and supports auto-discovery of test modules and functions. Additionally, it includes reporting functionality to display detailed information about the failure scenarios.

Key features:

• It provides quick and easy options for creating test cases and debugging.
• It allows teams to use compact test suites and handle complex testing needs.
• It suits simple projects.

Best suited for:

• Functional testing
• API testing

Robot Framework

One of the keyword-driven test tools, a Python-based open source test automation framework, Robot framework provides support to external libraries. With its keyword-driven approach, Robot framework allows teams to produce extremely readable test cases and makes the testing process easy. Robot framework with other testing frameworks enhances its capability to handle complex test scenarios.

Key features:

• It provides easy-to-use tabular test data syntax.
• It delivers clear test reports.
• It allows tech and non-tech specialists to create automated tests through drag-and-drop actions using the same syntax.

Best suited for:

• Acceptance testing
• Implementation of BDD testing

Jenkins

Created in Java, Jenkins offers extensive capabilities to build and test any software project, including those utilizing Java testing frameworks, when using a Jenkins server. Equipped with a wide range of plugins, including those for various test frameworks like Selenium, Cucumber, Appium, etc., it provides software engineers with a rich feature set for customization and meets the needs of projects of various sizes and complexities.

Key features:

• It provides regularly updated documentation
• It supports multiple operating systems

Best suited for:

• Agile testing
• API testing

Open Source Testing Tools Comparison

There are no one-size-fits-all open source testing tools and repositories. Most do offer easy-to-use interfaces, a wide range of plugins and built-in features, and support all major operating systems. Check out all highly-rated open source automation testing tools and repositories in the comparison table above, and you might find a testing framework that may meet your testing needs.

Bottom Line: Ready to get started with automation testing tool?

With effective automation testing tools and repositories in place, you can automate and streamline the tedious testing process, help QA and Dev teams become more productive, and provide actionable insights from test output executed during software development. Choosing an automation testing framework is worth it to guide your long-term growth.

However, when looking for a testing automation tool, don’t just rush into opting for a solution because it fits at the moment – think about building a test automation strategy and selecting test methods to gain benefits from it.