BrowserStack vs. Selenium

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
BrowserStack
Score 8.4 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 8.3 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
$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
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
The main factor contributing to the adoption of BrowserStack over the others we tested is its ease of adaptation. This tool doesn't require much training to adapt. Onboarding is faster, and UAECases testing is very fast, as it includes parallel testing automation capabilities.
Chose BrowserStack
We found BrowserStack and never tried anything else.
Chose BrowserStack
Chrome DevTools is free, but it takes a lot of time to manually switch devices/models, etc. And it doesn't let you switch to another system or browser (of course). When we did use it more, we'd also have to find other Chrome extensions to make up for things it didn't have built …
Chose BrowserStack
We used LambdaTest, but ultimately it didn't work for us because it put us in a queue when we kicked off a testing job instead of starting immediately. Our continuous integration process is managed by Microsoft Azure DevOps, and the pipeline agents it provides have a 60-minute …
Chose BrowserStack
Ability to evaluate across platforms is a unique feature in BrowserStack
Chose BrowserStack
It had all of the features we needed. The user interface is clean and accessible. AWS Device Farm was clunky, slow, and hard to use AND offered very little automation options / APIs.

We really needed a solution that could become part of an automated testing pipeline and …
Chose BrowserStack
BrowserStack is simpler and more user friendly than Sauce Labs and can be easily learned by any individual who is new to it and does not require much efforts. Also, BrowserStack is more trusted by the clients that we offer services to, and is always considered the best option …
Chose BrowserStack
It has a wide range of devices for both mobile and web browsers.
Chose BrowserStack
BrowserStack is much compact and faster compared to katalon studio for mobile testing and supporting a lot of emulators compared to katalon.The licensing cost is also better compared to katalon and the user base of BrowserStack is high with official documentation well in place …
Chose BrowserStack
BrowserStack is often favored for its broader device coverage, ease of use, and strong local testing, while Sauce Labs shines with deeper analytics (video, network capture), AI-driven features, and robust performance for large-scale automation, especially for mobile/desktop …
Chose BrowserStack
Before BrowserStack, I use local emulators. They were helpful for quick checks but not reliable for real world testing.
Chose BrowserStack
well is a better option for doing testing. I used only Snagit for simple things in documentation, but usinga browser is more complete for the process of doing a large number of test cases. Snagit can crash your system with a lot of pictures, but a browser doesn't do it …
Chose BrowserStack
I actually tried BitBar back when they were still called CrossBrowserTesting. They offered a free trial when Browserstack got hacked in 2014. I wasn't a huge fan of their service vs Browserstack, mainly because the UI was less intuitive. I ultimately ended up going back to …
Chose BrowserStack
Easy UI and seamless integration with CI/CD
Chose BrowserStack
The test results were not realistic and accurate. The user friendly dashboard in BrowserStack scores above other application
Chose BrowserStack
N/A - BrowserStack was the first software I've tried to address these requirements.

Previously we've been limited to testing on a handful of devices and browser combinations that our team has physical access to.
Chose BrowserStack
BrowserStack is user friendly, has more tools and integration with Jira.
Chose BrowserStack
I've never used any competing products before.
Chose BrowserStack
BrowserStack provided similar features at a lower cost than any other platform. All features surpass those of our competitors. Support from the BrowserStack team is awesome.
Chose BrowserStack
I chose BrowserStack over Playwright because it was far more simpler to test test cases, builds were already set up and was just right because our web application was not as complex as others. We also used it because of the text and image validation which is what we really …
Chose BrowserStack
A bit cheaper and I had experience with you in another company I worked at so I recommended you
Selenium
Chose Selenium
The excel integration was key for using Selenium. I needed to be able to pull excel reports and use SQL, so I needed to find a program that would work with Excel natively. Selenium allowed me to reuse some of my existing SQL code and add a level of automation that I was not …
Chose Selenium
When we compared Selenium to Saucelabs, [we found that] both have their own set of advantages but [preferred] Selenium [in the end]. [With] Selenium we have a uniform setup in place to test both the framework and grid which makes it preferable over Saucelabs. [The] test …
Chose Selenium
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 …
Chose Selenium
I did not have used any other yet.
Chose Selenium
Customers are always spending less cost on tools and prefer open-source tools which leverage all applications Can be tailored your framework in selenium according to application Moreover CI/CD pipeline is easy in selenium compared to other tools Can be built custom test …
Chose Selenium
The main Selenium usage is in the security field. Selenium drives the web application and let ZAP test some piece of software and UI in order to find security issues. Is Jenkins in charge to run it and manage reports? For the reporting, we tried many solutions, including …
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
Selenium is way better than those two as it's free and has great community support.
Chose Selenium
ReadyAPI (formerly SoapUI Pro, LoadUI Pro, & ServiceV Pro), TestComplete, Micro Focus UFT One (formerly HP UFT), Apache JMeter and Selenium
Chose Selenium
The main reason I prefer Selenium is because it has a fairly common user community and because it 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 …
Chose Selenium
Since it is an open-source testing tool, there is no licensing cost involved. Selenium is a cross-platform tool that supports cross-browser testing. To manage and report test cases Selenium can be easily integrated with frameworks like JUnit, TestNG.
Chose Selenium
I have used Winium, Sikuli, and Auto IT to do the automation with windows-based applications. Mostly, I will use Selenium only.
Chose Selenium
We have looked at other options, but none are open source like Selenium and easily plug able into different web applications. Selenium does not cost anything, and although you don't get support for it, there are many technical forums our there that provide troubleshooting if …
Chose Selenium
The first obvious thing is Selenium, an open-source tool, and it has a wide-open community for support. Well, on the other hand, Silk Test is a paid tool. With the combination of different tools in the market, we can build a solution for Web and Mobile based automation using …
Chose Selenium
UFT is a paid tool from microfocus and able to automated alomsts all platforms but there is Fee for licensed versions software. TOSCA is also a paid tool from Tricentis which does not require coding skills from tester and implements mode based automation. where as selenium is …
Chose Selenium
We use both the products in our work. Mostly we avoid Selenium because we have replaced that half of the work with RPA, which works faster than Selenium and with less brainstorming. Some of our work can only be done with Selenium, while some of our work can work faster with RPA.
Chose Selenium
Our marketing automation application is built on AngularJS and have a lot of JavaScript specialization inside our company use Protractor.
Chose Selenium
All alternatives are not listed here (like QTP), but Selenium beats all of them because it's free, there are tons of guides and tutorials on the internet, and there are lots of extra libraries that use Selenium.
Chose Selenium
We were considering HP QTP against Selenium.
but we chose Selenium because of the following reasons:
1. Selenium is more widely used and has more online support community
Chose Selenium
Ghost Inspector, a cloud-based automated web app testing tool, used for recording and playback, a lot like Selenium IDE. Ghost Inspector provides Google Chrome and Firefox plugins to record browser actions and allows users to save the tests on their cloud platform. It allows …
Features
BrowserStackSelenium
Automation Testing
Comparison of Automation Testing features of Product A and Product B
BrowserStack
-
Ratings
Selenium
10.0
Ratings
18% above category average
Record and Automate00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Multi-Browser Testing00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Test Management00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Integrated Version Control00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Object Recognition00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Data-Driven Testing00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Testing Reports & Analytics00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
BrowserStackSelenium
Small Businesses
TestComplete
TestComplete
Score 8.0 out of 10
BrowserStack
BrowserStack
Score 8.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
ReadyAPI
ReadyAPI
Score 6.1 out of 10
ReadyAPI
ReadyAPI
Score 6.1 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
8.8
(0 ratings)
9.2
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.1
(0 ratings)
9.2
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.1
(0 ratings)
8.8
(0 ratings)
Availability
9.8
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
5.8
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.9
(0 ratings)
8.3
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
7.3
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
4.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.1
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Configurability
8.3
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
8.2
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.9
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.2
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
BrowserStackSelenium
Likelihood to Recommend
As per my experience, BrowserStack is more suited for those organizations that have a remote work culture and also for those who need multiple device testing. Also, it is beneficial for those organizations that do not want to spend more on physical devices, as the devices update frequently in the market. It is not appropriate for those organizations which have lesser need of multi- device testing as the subscription model may not be feasible for them. Also a small organization with less number of employees would not opt for BrowserStack as it would be costlier for them.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Pros
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • Recognize Adobe Flash and MS Silver Light elements without additional help
  • Detect and locate Java applets ingredients
  • Having the "Wait-till-Displayed" or "Wait-till-Present" as a built in Web Driver function instead of requirement for writing loops and defining expliccit wait, visiblewait, invisiblewait, etc.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
It's simply a must-have tool. As a designer, I have to ensure my work is at least functional in older browsers. I also have to ensure that, when I design for mobile devices, any differences between platforms aren't problematic. BrowserStack allows me to test my work in a fraction of the time, with a whole lot more accuracy.
Read full review
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
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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For those who are unfamiliar with coding, there is a bit of a learning curve. There is plenty of helpful documentation and resources but it can take a little time to get the software up and running. Once you get the hang of how Selenium works, and what it can do, you realize how many things you can use it for, and how many processes you can automate.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
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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No answers on this topic
Performance
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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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
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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The Selenium app has a pretty fat community of users. For the problems we are experiencing, we are primarily receiving support from these communities. In addition, there is widespread service support. Instant support is given to the problems we experience when we need Online support. We and our team are happy to provide this support, especially before important deployment processes
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In-Person Training
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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No answers on this topic
Online Training
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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No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
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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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
We used LambdaTest, but ultimately it didn't work for us because it put us in a queue when we kicked off a testing job instead of starting immediately. Our continuous integration process is managed by Microsoft Azure DevOps, and the pipeline agents it provides have a 60-minute timeout. We need immediate tests instead of flipping a coin, which could cause a false positive failure due to timeouts.
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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.
Read full review
Scalability
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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No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
  • Browserstack improved our internal confidence level when it came to signing off on testing
  • Browserstack improved the confidence level of our clients by decreasing the number of bugs found during PVT and providing an entry level opportunity for our clients to perform UAT using the same tools.
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  • Generation of detailed finding reports helped in cost savings in regard to direct labor.
  • Quality Assurance technicians found value in repeating mundane duties that they perform daily. It saved mental energy due to the automation process.
  • The value was established in high volume usage in setting up meetings as well as new accounts with A/B testing. Also merely cleaning up old test documents by evaluating them and organization or deletion.
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ScreenShots

BrowserStack Screenshots

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