Before selling every physical product to customers, the production team performs various tests to see if the product is durable and working as expected. The same happens in the software industry with thorough software and API testing.
The software testing is the final yet crucial part of the entire software development lifecycle. Without the testing, no software program or service can make it to the market.
The engineers have to use a wide range of software testing methods to get the job done.
With manual and automatic testing, the engineers find out the issues and fix them. The manual testing has to be done manually and takes time to complete. However, for automatic testing, there are numerous test automation frameworks available.
These best test automation frameworks are crucial for automating the entire test process and getting comprehensive reports. These testing platforms and frameworks are perfect if you want to perform deep testing of your software programs and services before shipping them to the clients.
Let’s check out a few top test automation frameworks to use in your software development lifecycle
Test Automation Frameworks to Use in 2024
#1 - Selenium
Selenium is the most popular test framework that is used in the industry. The best thing about this framework is that it’s open-source and available for free. As it’s an open-source project, there is a huge developer community to address the issues and provide help.
Selenium comes with a wide range of plugins or additional features like WebDriver, IDE, and Grid. You can write custom test scripts in various languages like C#, Python, Java, JavaScript, and many others.
Selenium works best for the browser automation and cross-browser testing of web apps, websites, and services. If you have to run multiple tests at the same time, parallel testing helps you run these tests with ease.
Selenium is completely free to download and use.
Official Website - https://www.selenium.dev/
#2 - Cypress
Cypress is a new and open-source testing framework that is useful for testing web apps and online services. This framework is very simple and comes with a ton of amazing features.
Cypress is an open-source framework and can be installed through NPM on your systems. Also, it comes with the support for JavaScript for writing custom tests and automating the entire process.
Additionally, Cypress can work well with the CI/CD pipelines in CircleCI, AWS CodeBuild, and many others. With this framework, you can get screenshots of the test fails on a regular basis for better diagnosis of the issues.
Cypress is free to use in the self-hosted mode, but you can purchase the cloud service for an end-to-end testing experience without any worries.
Official Website - https://www.cypress.io/
#3 - Puppeteer
If you prefer the less resource-intensive framework, then Puppeteer is the best option. It provides headless access to the high-level API to control Chrome and Firefox browsers for web testing.
Puppeteer is an open-source JavaScript-based framework, which was developed by Google and maintained by the developers. Puppeteer uses the DevTools protocol and WebDriver BiDi to provide access to the testing frameworks on Chrome and Firefox browsers.
Puppeteer is pretty easy to install through NPM and Yarn on your web servers or local systems. It integrates pretty well with the CI/CD pipelines built on Jenkins, TravisCI, TeamCity, and many other platforms.
The best thing about Puppeteer is that it runs headless without UI and provides a bare-bone experience for quick automatic testing on web apps.
Official Website - https://pptr.dev/
#4 - TestCafe
TestCafe is quite popular amongst Test Engineers as it provides end-to-end testing solutions for web apps and API services. TestCafe is an open-source framework and it’s pretty easy to install for initiating the testing process.
TestCafe provides excellent support for cross-browser testing for browsers like Chromium, Firefox, Opera, Safari, Edge, and also BrowserStack. This framework solution works best with the majority of the CI/CD pipelines for efficiency testing experience.
Installing TestCafe is pretty easy with a single NPM command. It has a desktop app for Windows, MacOS, and Linux, hence you can use it on any operating system as you want.
TestCafe is open-source and doesn't cost anything to install and use on your systems for an end-to-end testing experience.
Official Website - https://testcafe.io/
#5 - PlayWright
PlayWright is another open-source test automation framework that will be quite popular in 2024. Testers can have the ultimate automatic testing experience with the end-to-end solution.
PlayWright offers Cross-browser, Cross-platform, and Cross-language support. This means it works for browsers like Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. It works on Operating Systems like Windows, MacOS, and Linux. It also works with programming languages like TypeScript, JavaScript, .NET, and Python to write custom test codes.
If you prefer headless operations, then PlayWright comes with the headless mode for quick and easy testing without any UI. Unlike other testing frameworks, PlayWright supports testing for the mobile web UI as well as Desktop Ui for better results.
This automation framework for testing provides a visual testing experience and real-time alerts for various activities while testing.
Official Website - https://playwright.dev/
#6 - Appium
For testing the mobile apps on iOS and Android, Appium is commonly used. Appium is a versatile framework that is not only used for Mobile device app testing but also for web apps and Smart TV apps.
You can use Appium to write and execute automated tests in languages like Python, JavaScript, Java, and many others. The best thing is that it works without you needing to recompile the apps every time you run the tests.
Appium can be integrated with CI/CD pipelines like Jenkins, Travis CI, CircleCI, and many other platforms. Also, it supports parallel automation testing using the Sessions API. This means, the testers can use it to run parallel tests on multiple platforms at once.
Official Website - https://appium.io/
#7 - Cucumber
The name might seem weird, but Cucumber is one of the best test frameworks for automation testing. This framework uses the Behaviour Development Language, which uses plain English to design and execute the tests.
The cucumber framework works well with TypeScript and Javascript for custom test design. For the newbies, the plain text instructions are useful for quick testing of the web apps.
This framework allows you to reuse the test scripts using the step definitions for designing future steps. Also, it integrates well with all of the popular CI/CD pipeline platforms without any issues.
Official Website - https://cucumber.io/
Final Words
The Software Testing industry is predicted to reach USD 97.3 billion by 2032 with a CAGR of 7% per annum from 2024. The industry is focusing on providing web apps and software programs without any issues, vulnerabilities, or bugs.
Software testing frameworks like Selenium, and Appium are commonly used in the industry. However the newbies find it confusing to choose the best test automation frameworks for their projects.
We listed a few best frameworks for test automation in no particular order. All of the mentioned framework solutions are commonly used in companies for conducting automation testing. Choose the one that suits your needs and start working on test projects.