Top 10 End-to-End Testing Tools In 2024
End-to-end (E2E) testing evaluates an application's functionality and performance from start to end under real-world conditions. It ensures all application components work seamlessly together to improve the user experience. This testing identifies issues earlier, reduces the cost of fixing problems later, and confirms the application's ability to handle traffic and data loads. E2E testing ensures that the security protocol is aligned with all requirements before launch. Yet, it presents the following challenges.
Simulating user interactions can be tough and may cause unexpected issues. Setting up a test environment that accurately reflects production is another hurdle. Selecting the right tools is crucial to managing the applications involved in business processes. To address these challenges, we have listed some top end-to-end testing tools, their features, pros, and cons.
10 Best End-to-End Testing Tools
1. ACCELQ
ACCELQ is a test automation platform powered by AI. It brings all the testing phases in a collaborative and codeless cloud environment. This platform can test web, mobile, desktop, API, mainframe, and packaged apps in a unified flow. ACCELQ offers an end-to-end testing framework to test applications across the technology stack. It can automate all aspects of the test lifecycle, from test case design to planning and execution. Hence, QA teams can achieve end-to-end testing using this unified platform for better testing outcomes.
Features:
- ACCELQ supports comprehensive end-to-end automation capabilities.
- This platform enables testers to create test cases without writing code.
- Test design is automated through an intelligent universe model that drives the entire test lifecycle.
- It automates complex end-to-end technology workflow.
- Cross-project asset sharing lets your team share actions and resources across projects. It enables end-to-end automation without duplicating test assets.
- Test assets are end-to-end aligned with platform vendor releases and live updates on new releases by vendors.
- Screen recording and natural language editor provide code-free validation handling across technology stacks.
- This platform needs low maintenance for an end-to-end testing framework.
- CI Jobs created in this platform can be invoked in a Github pipeline as a Github Action.
- ACCELQ executes automation scripts in CI pipelines using Jenkins, TeamCity, and Bamboo plugins.
- Dynamic live result views with actionable reports for triggering reruns.
- The hosting environment is secure on Amazon AWS service. Access to the hosted environment is restricted via IAM, IP-restricted security groups, and access audits.
Pros & Cons of ACCELQ
- Quality assurance is excellent
- Security testing is supported
- Test script reviews are provided
- No cons
2. Selenium
Selenium is a framework that offers end-to-end test automation. It supports programming languages through Selenium drivers. The libraries for each language expose commands from the API in the form of methods.
Features:
- Java, JavaScript, and Python languages are supported for testers to write test scripts.
- This testing framework supports different browser drivers.
- A record and playback feature can record the interactions with the browser using Selenium IDE.
- Testers can debug by setting breakpoints and pausing on exception features.
Pros & Cons of Selenium
- Automate web user interface components
- Supports multiple programming languages
- Automated Form-Filling and Data Scraping
- Desktop Automation
- Requires multiple monitors
- Technical Issues with Browsers (Except Firefox)
3. Cypress
Cypress is an end-to-end testing framework. It is a Javascript-based test framework that makes asynchronous testing simple. Asynchronous testing means testing the applications based on different events or triggers. This framework can enable you to write integration and unit tests besides end-to-end tests.
Features:
- IntelliSense offers code suggestions in IDE while you write tests.
- Debugs through stack traces and test edge cases without a server.
- This framework can detect, flag, and track flaky tests from recorded test runs in the CI/CD pipeline.
- GitHub Action CI integration can ease the setup. The action provides dependency installation and more configuration options for advanced workflows.
- View videos of an entire test suite from the CLI using this framework.
Pros & Cons of Cypress
- Debuggability
- Automatically waits for commands
- Time Travel for Application State
- Doesn’t support API testing
- Version control
- Test script reviews
4. Playwright
Playwright enables end-to-end testing for web apps. It supports all modern rendering engines.
Features:
- Codegen generates tests by recording your actions and saving them in any language.
- User interface mode can run and debug tests with watch mode.
- This framework allows tests to be executed in CI environments. The command-line tools can install all OS dependencies on GitHub Actions.
- Selectors of this framework pierce shadow DOM and allow the seamless entry of frames.
- The trace viewer captures all the information needed to investigate the test failure.
- This framework can capture execution traces, videos, and screenshots to eliminate flakes.
Pros & Cons of Playwright
- Supports multiple programming languages
- Mobile device emulation
- Initiates Network Activities
- No real device support for mobile browser testing
- Limited plugins or extensions
- Community support is limited
5. WebdriverIO
WebdriverIO is an end-to-end testing framework that automates mobile, web, and desktop applications. It provides a set of plugins to create a scalable and stable test suite.
Features:
- Mocha, Jasmine, and Cucumber.js frameworks are supported in-built.
- This framework has many built-in plugins to integrate and extend the setup.
- Proprietary automation protocols like Chrome DevTools for debugging are supported.
- Runs an e2e test for a web extension that uses content scripts to run JavaScript on websites.
- Integration to CI systems like Jenkins and Bamboo is supported.
- Reporters can debug tests and track test results with Junit or Allure.
Pros & Cons of WebdriverIO
- Automate applications with web frameworks
- Supports all browsers
- CLI test runners
- Report Integrations, specifically allure
- Limited language support
- High maintenance
6. Robot Framework
Robot Framework is a generic open-source framework for acceptance test-driven development (ATDD). Testing capabilities can be extended by test libraries by implementing Python or Java. Users can create new high-level keywords from existing ones using the syntax created for test cases.
Features:
- This framework enables tabular syntax for uniformly creating test cases.
- It provides a library API for creating customized test libraries and can be implemented natively with Python.
- This framework supports creating data-driven test cases. It has built-in support for variables for testing in various environments.
- It provides tagging to categorize and select test cases to be executed.
- XML-based output files are provided for integration into existing continuous integration systems.
- Result reports and logs are in HTML format.
Pros & Cons of Robot Framework
- Easily extendable with basic coding skills
- Extensive libraries
- Supports mobile and Windows applications
- Pages in an app change heavily without reloading
- Not a good IDE solution
- Random test results
7. Mabl
Mabl is one of the low-code end-to-end test automation tools. It can build app test coverage and integrate tests into your existing CI/CD workflow.
Features:
- This tool combines all test types into one test suite for detailed end-to-end testing.
- A consistent experience is offered across browsers with reusable tests.
- Reduce test maintenance.
- GenAI-powered auto-healing tests improve reliability and adapt to user interface changes.
- This tool can provide feedback with unlimited scalability in the cloud.
Pros & Cons of Mabl
- Data extraction and visualization
- User management
- Version control
- Security testing is not supported
- Test script reviews are not available
- No performance management
8. Cucumber
Cucumber is a framework that supports Behavior Driven Development (BDD). It reads executable specifications and validates that the software works as per specifications. The specifications consist of many scenarios. Cucumber must follow some basic syntax rules called Gherkin to understand the scenarios. It is a set of grammar rules that makes structured plain text.
Features:
- This framework supports only web environments.
- BDD is supported to work in rapid, small iterations to increase feedback.
- This framework can run scenarios in various browsers based on a configuration property loaded at runtime.
- CI tools like Ant, Maven, and Rake are supported.
- Built-in plugins like HTML and XML are available to fetch test execution reports.
Pros & Cons of Cucumber
- CI tools integrations are easy
- Readable tests
- Reuabaility to reduce duplication of test suites
- Test execution takes time
- Writing and maintaining Gherkin scenarios takes time
- Test data management for complex scenarios is challenging
9. Katalon
Katalon is one of the automated end-to-end testing tools that supports user interface and API layer testing. It provides capabilities that allow your team to collaborate, manage, scale, and improve test operations.
Features:
- Tests are planned with releases and builds and scheduled test runs.
- This tool can organize designed tests in test suites or dynamic test suites.
- Runtime engine executes and schedules tests.
- This tool provides several methods to handle errors during test execution.
- After each test execution, this tool generates reports to track test activities.
Pros & Cons of Katalon
- Data storage management
- Static analysis
- Reporting and statistics
- Security testing
- No version control
- Poor quality assurance
10. TestComplete
TestComplete can automate functional tests for any application. Its intelligent object repository and many controls ensure that tests are scalable and easy to maintain.
Features:
- Scriptless recording and replay are available to create automated tests.
- With a built-in keyword-driven testing framework, this tool can separate test steps, objects, actions, and data.
- Test cases written using the Gherkin syntax convert and automate tests.
- An Object recognition technology maintains test cases.
- A Command Line Interface and REST API can integrate automated tests to other tools.
Pros & Cons of TestComplete
- User interface with extensive functionalities for testing GUIs
- CI/CD integration
- Technical support is provided
- Limited testing on the cloud
- High cost
- Limited customizing framework
Conclusion
End-to-end testing is a part of software development, as it traces the user experience. Organizations must embrace end-to-end testing frameworks as new products are continuously delivered to users. These frameworks allow seamless yet detailed functionality and performance testing.
As a test automation and management platform, ACCELQ supports rigorous end-to-end testing. It assists testers in simulating real-world scenarios and checking the system under test without any coding.
Book a free trial to explore more of our intelligent automation and intuitive test management platform.