BrowserStack vs. Chrome DevTools

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
BrowserStack
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
BrowserStack is a test platform built for developers and QAs to expand test coverage, scale and optimize testing with cross-browser, real device cloud, accessibility, visual testing, test management, and test observability. BrowserStack states it currently powers over a billion tests a year for customers who include Amazon, Paypal, Well Fargo Bank, Nvidia, MongoDB, Pfizer, GE, Discovery, React JS, Apache, JQuery and several others rely on BrowserStack to test their web and mobile apps.
$0
per month Unlimited users and 5000 free screenshots
Chrome DevTools
Score 9.6 out of 10
N/A
Chrome DevTools is a set of authoring, debugging, and profiling tools built into Google Chrome.N/A
Pricing
BrowserStackChrome DevTools
Editions & Modules
Percy - Free
$0
per month Unlimited users and 5000 free screenshots
App Percy - Free
$0
per month 5000 free screenshots and 100 minutes of infrastructure
Test Observability - Unlimited Free
$0
Accessibility Testing - Free
$0
Test Observability - Observability Pro
$0.01
per month per test execution
Percy - Desktop
$0.02
per month per screenshot
App Percy - Visual Core
$0.02
per month per screenshot
Percy - Desktop & Mobile
$0.02
per month per screenshot
App Percy - Visual Cloud
$0.03
per month per screenshot
Live - Desktop
$39
per month per user
Live - Desktop & Mobile
$49
per month per user
App Live - Individual
$49
per month per user
Automate - Desktop
$129
per month 1 parallel test
Live - Team
$175
per month 5 users
App Live - Team
$175
per month 5 users
Accessibility Testing - Team
$199
per month 5 users
Automate - Desktop & Mobile
$225
per month 1 parallel test
App Automate - Device Cloud
$249
per month 1 parallel test
App Live - Team Pro
$289
per month 5 users
App Automate - Device Cloud Pro
$299
per month 1 parallel test
Automate - Enterprise
Contact sales team
Percy - Enterprise
Contact Sales
App Automate - Enterprise
Contact Sales
App Live - Enterprise
Contact sales team
Live - Enterprise
Contact sales team
App Automate - Device Cloud Pro + Visual Cloud
Contact Sales
App Percy - Enterprise
Contact Sales
Test Observability - Enterprise
Contact Sales
Accessibility Testing - Enterprise
Contact Sales
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BrowserStackChrome DevTools
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BrowserStackChrome DevTools
Considered Both Products
BrowserStack
Chose BrowserStack
BrowserStack's library of devices and browsers is way bigger than Chrome DevTools. Additionally, I find that BrowserStack is more accurate than Chrome DevTools in regards to how pages render on the various devices I need to test on. Overall, BrowserStack is far better than Chrom…
Chose BrowserStack
Litmus for email testing but it's not really a competitor of BrowserStack. No other products compare from what I've seen.
Chose BrowserStack
I looked into other software, but I did not find any of them to be as intuitive as BrowserStack. It was easy to use and had all of the devices we required for testing. The pricing structure also suited the needs of our team. Other team members had familiarity with BrowserStack …
Chrome DevTools
Chose Chrome DevTools
Unable to enter Firefox Developer Tools above, but that was the main alternative. We do still use it on occasion as sometimes things look/work well in Chrome but not in Firefox. In general, however, Chrome DevTools are more commonly used as that is the browser most of our …
Chose Chrome DevTools
It is much faster than other tools and being integrated within the browser makes it easier to use as there is no time wasted switching context.
Best Alternatives
BrowserStackChrome DevTools
Small Businesses
TestComplete
TestComplete
Score 7.9 out of 10
Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Score 9.3 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
ReadyAPI
ReadyAPI
Score 6.4 out of 10
Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Score 9.3 out of 10
Enterprises
ignio AIOps
ignio AIOps
Score 8.1 out of 10
Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Score 9.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
BrowserStackChrome DevTools
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(244 ratings)
9.3
(28 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.1
(19 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.7
(23 ratings)
8.8
(5 ratings)
Availability
9.6
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
5.4
(78 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.6
(24 ratings)
7.4
(2 ratings)
In-Person Training
7.3
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
4.3
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.7
(8 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
8.3
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
8.9
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
8.4
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.8
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Professional Services
8.9
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
9.0
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.4
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
BrowserStackChrome DevTools
Likelihood to Recommend
BrowserStack
Browserstack is great if you have a need for cross-browser or cross-device testing. You can even load in native apps/websites that might not be live on the public internet but are hosted on a secure network, which makes it easier to test against QA and STG environments as well. There might be better tools out there if you don't really have a need for that cross browser and device testing though and are just looking to set up some type of automation or only have a few devices or OSes that you need to test with. The value of the product will vary wildly depending on what you want to do with it.
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Google
Chrome DevTools are great for troubleshooting bugs, broken elements on pages, styling issues, responsiveness, identifying performance issues, third-party connections for data privacy, reviewing cookies and local storage, screenshots in different dimensions. Chrome DevTools are for technical users, so you do need to have a decent understanding of some basics like HTML and CSS to get started using them.
Read full review
Pros
BrowserStack
  • Test client website on 5x more platform.
  • Provide a real device with features like media injection and Physical SIM testing for manual testing of a specific feature.
  • Automate regression suite to execute parallel on multiple device.
  • Provide an accessibility report for the website through automated scanning of the site using site.xml.
Read full review
Google
  • The Elements panel is usually our first port of call to inspect and modify HTML and CSS in real-time.
  • The Issues panel helps us to identify and resolve problems like cookie issues etc.
  • The console panel allows developers to see the log output created by their website in real-time.
  • Lighthouse helps us identify any issues with accessibility
Read full review
Cons
BrowserStack
  • I wish it didn't time out so quickly. I often move back and forth between my native Mac OS system and browsers to BrowserStack for Windows browsers and it often times out so I have to start over.
  • I am not sure why, but when I've been testing in BrowserStack for a long period of time - maybe over a couple of hours, it sometimes gets buggy and unresponsive or slow to respond. It makes it hard to tell if I'm experiencing an issue with the site I'm testing or if it's an issue with BrowserStack.
  • If I'm wishing for the moon and stars, I'd ask for the ability to use BrowserStack to also test with JAWS screen reader. But I'm happy having NVDA.
Read full review
Google
  • As one delves into DevTools, one encounters a gradually steeper learning curve. You can do a lot very quickly, but to fully utilize DevTools takes time as one explores what it can do.
  • With many new updates, tools and items are moved, and a comfortable workflow becomes a frustrating search. This often happens when following only slightly outdated tutorials on a given feature, even in Google's own documentation.
  • The experimental flags, settings, and options are scattered about and a little clunky to configure when one has to make changes in multiple places.
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Likelihood to Renew
BrowserStack
It's almost the 3rd year for us and it's renewal time for us. So yes, we are already discussing how many licenses we need to increase as users are increasing internally. So it's 100% sure that we are already planning renewal this year as well BrowserStack with live and app automate.
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Google
No answers on this topic
Usability
BrowserStack
So many options that it can be a little overwhelming, but the core functions are easy to find and use and it's usually not too hard to figure things out for the more complex tasks. Very easy to boot up a device and a specific browser from the dashboard to begin a manual website test.
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Google
While Chrome DevTools are very powerful, it's not the easiest thing to use, as there are so many different tools built in. It takes some exploring to discover all the options possible within DevTools, but with a little exploring, the DevTools become a very powerful asset. Accessing the basic HTML and CSS inspection is very easy though, and that's the most common usage for the DevTools.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
BrowserStack
I rated BrowserStack's availability a 10 because it is consistently reliable, with minimal to no downtime or unplanned outages. The platform is accessible whenever needed, ensuring uninterrupted testing. Its robust infrastructure and proactive monitoring ensure a seamless experience, allowing us to meet deadlines without delays caused by availability issues and all
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Google
No answers on this topic
Performance
BrowserStack
The tests are fast considering the fact that they're Appium tests. I've seen tests reliably pass or fail when they're supposed to, with next to zero issues on the BrowserStack side of things. Tests launch only seconds after I kick off them off from my CLI.
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Google
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
BrowserStack
I've not had much direct interaction with the BrowserStack support team. The help and community are great and we've not run into any issue that has really required us to reach out. I guess having a stable and easy to use system means you may never need to contact support.
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Google
I'm not entirely sure what to rate the support for DevTools, because I don't have any experience dealing with official customer support for DevTools. I would guess the primary support for DevTools would be in a Chrome forum. Typically if I have a question or issue, I am able to find an answer from doing a quick Google search. It's pretty widely used, so it's not difficult to find answers.
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In-Person Training
BrowserStack
Yes, it was online training on meet, and trainer looks like skilled and technical strong, he has covered end to end all the features and he has answers all the queries. because of this trainings we are able to implement it by our own in the organization, thank you for support and training.
Read full review
Google
No answers on this topic
Online Training
BrowserStack
It was a quick training from the support of browserstack, it was nice and easy to understand, thanks again for the support given by the team. and regularly I used to receive mails for training from support for any new feature they launch, I was able to spread same training to all my team and dev.
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Google
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
BrowserStack
I rated the implementation satisfaction an 8 because while it went smoothly overall, there were some challenges during the initial learning phase and integration with existing tools. Key insights include the importance of providing sufficient training upfront and ensuring seamless integration with other systems to minimize disruptions and improve adoption speed.
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Google
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
BrowserStack
BrowserStack products has been found better for low code automations and visual regression techniques. We have been struggling to maintain the API endpoint sanity tests and writing a lot of code for them while releasing the builds, while we chose BrowserStack accessibility solutions, we found it a way easier than we thought and worked it up.
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Google
I find them pretty much the same, they have the same tools except Firefox doesn't provide the lighthouse functionality. I do prefer firefox's dark theme and colour palette. But I use Chrome Dev tools because of the Light house functionality that analyzes the page load and scores the website on desktop and mobile experience.
Read full review
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
BrowserStack
No Vendors were involved, directly dealt with Browserstack
Read full review
Google
No answers on this topic
Scalability
BrowserStack
I may not be the best person to answer this as I am only using it for 1 department and at 1 site but will still try my best As far as Scalability for Devices for Mobile Automation is concerned, it gets a Solid 10, as the users can run cases on upto 10 device parallel and also have the best choices of devices to choose
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Google
No answers on this topic
Professional Services
BrowserStack
Not used
Read full review
Google
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
BrowserStack
  • It reduced the cost of buying multiple devices as we have multiple devices access in it
  • Easily accessible from anywhere due to it cloud availability
  • Introducing this to our client also helped us in building trust as well as winning their confidence during deliverables
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Google
  • All positive, the tool is free so there's no need to spend money on it. Every return is positive.
  • A lot, their tools increases productivity due because it helps developers to create and test websites inside the browser.
  • Tools are intuitive so there's no need to invest in education on developers to learn these tools.
Read full review
ScreenShots

BrowserStack Screenshots

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