BrowserStack vs. Selenium

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
BrowserStack
Score 8.3 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
Selenium
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
Selenium is open source software for browser automation, primarily used for functional, load, or performance testing of applications.N/A
Pricing
BrowserStackSelenium
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
$29
per month per user
Live - Desktop & Mobile
$39
per month per user
App Live - Individual
$39
per month per user
Automate - Desktop
$129
per month 1 parallel test
Live - Team
$150
per month 5 users
App Live - Team
$150
per month 5 users
Automate - Desktop & Mobile
$199
per month 1 parallel test
App Automate - Device Cloud
$199
per month 1 parallel test
App Live - Team Pro
$199
per month 5 users
Accessibility Testing - Team
$199
per month 5 users
App Automate - Device Cloud Pro
$249
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
BrowserStackSelenium
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
BrowserStackSelenium
Considered Both Products
BrowserStack
Chose BrowserStack
easier to integrate, less effort from QAs

Selenium grid is another option which is free.
Chose BrowserStack
We chose BrowserStack as our solution as it provides a comprehensive, all-in-one package. This integrated approach ensures that all your needs are met in one place, eliminating the need for multiple tools or services. It streamlines processes, improves efficiency, and …
Chose BrowserStack
It is one of the product which each software organisation should include in their end to end product development journey. I have explored other products in this category and I can proudly say that BrowserStack is a clear winner in terms of its Features, Performance and Product …
Chose BrowserStack
Price looks little high for browserstack , they need to introduce more flexible plans to stack their customers, support team must be more quick, sometimes they take more than 2-3 days to resolve the issue. other tools are available in less cost with same features. so later on …
Chose BrowserStack
I have used Saucelabs with Jenkins and would say both of them are really comprehensive. Yet I suggested BrowserStack to our customers and team since I have used it recently and felt it easy to use and implement Tests on it. BrowserStack support team is another reason behind why …
Chose BrowserStack
I haven't participated in selecting BrowserStack as tool, wide-company decisions done by QA team
Chose BrowserStack
I'm using the app automate feature for Automation of mobile application. So, we are add Jenkins for CI process to use on BrowserStack. For mobile application testing, We are using Appium with java client in our framework and also integrate with BrowserStack capabilities.
Chose BrowserStack
Easy to start using the first tier plan and from there you could easily upgrade based on your team's need and if you need to extend to other users. A good and wide selection of server locations helps us oversee how an actual user experience might be. His credentials in terms …
Chose BrowserStack
Before using BrowserStack, we had limited access to virtual machines for testing. Booting up each of these devices was time consuming and difficult to manage when multiple users needed to test. BrowserStack opened up our testing to more devices, being accessible by anyone who …
Selenium
Chose Selenium
Open sourced and free: Multiple language support: The community: Wide plugin support: Easy installation and intuitive usage: Cross-browser support: Remote testing: Multiple testing and parallel testing execution:
Chose Selenium
I have the most experience with selenium. I have used form filler, which is a Google add-on that allows you to create a form quickly. This is a little easier to use and has less setup time than selenium IDE, however, it is less powerful. I picked selenium because it is an …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
BrowserStackSelenium
Small Businesses
TestComplete
TestComplete
Score 7.0 out of 10
BrowserStack
BrowserStack
Score 8.3 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
ReadyAPI
ReadyAPI
Score 8.1 out of 10
ReadyAPI
ReadyAPI
Score 8.1 out of 10
Enterprises
ignio AIOps
ignio AIOps
Score 8.1 out of 10
ignio AIOps
ignio AIOps
Score 8.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
BrowserStackSelenium
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(149 ratings)
9.2
(55 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.0
(11 ratings)
9.2
(6 ratings)
Usability
8.9
(17 ratings)
8.8
(6 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
7.9
(77 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.3
(19 ratings)
8.3
(11 ratings)
In-Person Training
7.3
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
7.7
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.1
(4 ratings)
9.0
(3 ratings)
Configurability
7.8
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
4.7
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.4
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Professional Services
4.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.5
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.5
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
BrowserStackSelenium
Likelihood to Recommend
BrowserStack
I didn't have problems working with BrowserStack. The tool is stable, there are a lot of different devices and OS. It's really useful. I only had a problem in the past while working with a company that had geolocation activated on the app. The app only works in the USA, and I was in Brazil. I faced many many issues working on this circumstances. I tried to get in touch with BrowserStack, but I leave the company before get the problem solved. But that one was the only big problem that I've faced while using BrowserStack.
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Open Source
When you have to test the UI and how it behaves when certain actions are performed, you need something that can automate the browsers. This is where Selenium comes to the rescue. If you have to test APIs and not the frontend (UI), I would recommend going with other libraries that support HTTP Requests. Selenium is good only when you have no choice but to run the steps on a browser.
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Pros
BrowserStack
  • BrowserStack App Automate dashboard gives us video, screenshots and logs of what exactly happened during the test run. This helps us easily analyse failures in our automation test and figure out the root cause for failures.
  • BrowserStack App Live provides us with lot of devices to test on. This is specifically useful in case of high end iPhone devices which are costly for us to procure in house.
  • BrowserStack App Automate provides parallel threads which can be shared across multiple teams. This has helped us scale our mobile test automation effort across the organisation.
  • In house mobile lab might be cost effective initially but when it comes to maintaining it and add new devices as and when it comes in market makes it less cost effective than cloud solution like BrowserStack
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Open Source
  • For any web based UI automation, Selenium is the best tool out there to automate your tests.
  • It supports multiple coding languages like Java, Python, Ruby, C# etc.. to choose from.
  • There is a huge community of users and can get many answers on StackOverFlow.
  • It has lot of other plugins to make your tests even more efficient.
Read full review
Cons
BrowserStack
  • Overall performance of usability of the device
  • Overheating conditions could be a useful feature to be included
  • Downloading the app to the Home screen for quick selection would be helpful
  • Screen orientation feature
  • Tablets for additional devices to be tested against
  • Add in a feature to test against wearables
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Open Source
  • Selenium is pretty user-friendly but sometimes tests tend to flake out. I'd say roughly one out of twenty tests yields a false positive.
  • Selenium software cannot read images. This is a minor negative because a free plug-in is available from alternate sources.
  • Slowness may be a minor factor with Selenium, though this is an issue with basically any testing software since waiting on a site to execute JavaScript requires the browser to wait for a particular action.
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Likelihood to Renew
BrowserStack
This decisions mostly taken by senior management at VP and CEO level, they also need approval from many other teams like dev, design according to the use, and finance due to competitive cost, They do check other product as well, and I am just a single person from QA team, and not a decision maker
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Open Source
We love this product mainly because of its high customization abilities and the ease of use. Moreover, its free and can be learned easily through online communities and videos. The tests are more consistent and reliable as compared to Manual tests. It has enabled us to test a large number of features all in one go, which would have impossible through manual tests. The reports generated at the end of the tests are really helpful for the QA and the development teams to get a fair view of the application.
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Usability
BrowserStack
It integrates directly in internal networks and local development. The point and click interface of choosing your device, pick the browser/version and you have a working emulation of that exact environment. What else could you ask for? I've set our least computer savvy users up with BrowserStack for testing in minutes. It feels like it's just part of your local environemnt.
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Open Source
As I mentioned earlier, the reason I use Selenium is because there is a fairly widespread community of users, and user support services are at a good level. because the application is open source, it works on many platforms (Windows, Linux, IOS) without any problems. In addition, it gives us a lot of options for writing functional tests. For errors that we receive through the application, we can easily find the reasons for errors in the forums.
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Reliability and Availability
BrowserStack
Its always available in our organisation. Just a click away from testing on the exact devices we require.
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Open Source
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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Open Source
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
BrowserStack
I'm saying a 10 for support for BrowserStack only based on feedback from the development team. I myself have never had to reach out to support for any questions or issues, but others in the company have. From my conversations with them, the support was fantastic and had been a pleasure working with the BrowserStack team.
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Open Source
Selenium does not have technical support available easily. You have to go through forums to get the information you need. However, there are excellent forums out there that make it easy to troubleshoot. The open-source flexibility makes it difficult to have dedicated support.
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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.
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Open Source
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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Open Source
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
BrowserStack
It was new learning for me, till the time I was not aware of such tools are available for manual CBT testing and for automation integration caue I was using some VM for testing, it has increase my knowledge and skill set. It was a fun while implementation and I enjoyed it.
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Open Source
We did everything we needed to use it. Now we can execute our tests on different operational systems and browsers running few tests simultaneously. We also implemented Appium framework to execute our tests on mobile devices, such as iPhones, iPads, Android phones and tablets. We use SauceLabs for our test execution and Jenkins for continuous integration.
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Alternatives Considered
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 Chrome DevTools.
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Open Source
At the time of adoption, there were not many other alternatives that were even close to being competitive when it comes to browser testing. As far as I know now to this day, there is still little competition to Selenium for what it does. Any other browser-based testing still utilises Selenium to interact with the browser.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
BrowserStack
Not sure about all this billing details, I am not part of that discussion.
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Open Source
No answers on this topic
Scalability
BrowserStack
It provides us with the latest technology in the market, which enable us to make sure that the software we create is accessible on them.
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Open Source
No answers on this topic
Professional Services
BrowserStack
Not used
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Open Source
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
BrowserStack
  • Saves a lot of money, by providing several devices at our disposal
  • It gives you devices like, mobile phones, tabs and desktops of various Operating Systems
  • Only Challenge is it might consume more time for development, but testing should be fast and easy
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Open Source
  • There hasn’t been a downside to using it yet other than we’ve got to update the programs we create for each change.
  • This has saved us hundreds of hours of manpower by allowing our automation engineer to rapid fire tests.
  • We are able to screenshot and save entire sites before and after launch with a program the automation engineer created
  • We can compare large volumes of data against data in excel docs with a program created using Selenium
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ScreenShots

BrowserStack Screenshots

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