The Best Automated Browser Testing Tools

As a web application developer, it is your responsibility to ensure that not only do your applications work but that they provide an acceptable user experience across an acceptable number of web browsers

This is known as cross-browser compatibility–the ability of a website or web application to function across different browsers.

Here is our list of the best automated browser testing tools:

1. Site24x7 Synthetic Monitoring EDITOR’S CHOICE This cloud-based service offers a long list of testing functions that launch as transmissions or as browser-based tests with more than 120 test launch locations around the world. Get a 30-day free trial.
2. TestComplete Prides itself on the easiest-to-use and automated testing platform.
3. Smartbear Helps you find and document bugs on every browser before your customers do.
4. Browser Stack Allows teams to create and run automated cross-browser compatibility testing on over 1,000 actual desktop and mobile devices in real time.
5. Selenium Box An on-premise solution that helps organizations simplify their Selenium and Appium infrastructure for cross-browser and mobile tests.
6. Katalan Studio Among the most popular cross-browser testing tools built on top of the open-source automation frameworks Selenium, Appium with a specialized IDE interface for web, API, mobile, and desktop application testing.
7. LambdaTest A cloud-based platform that allows you to perform automated cross-browser testing on 2000+ real browsers and operating systems online on LambdaTest’s scalable cloud grid.
8. Ranorex Studio A commercial GUI automation tool that accelerates browser compatibility testing to ensure a consistent user experience across browsers and devices.
9. Selenium A free and open-source tool that enables and supports the automation of web browsers. Selenium is arguably the only free automation testing tool on the market that can compete with premium alternatives.
10. Browsera is an online-based premium automated browser compatibility testing tool. It tests and reports cross-browser layout differences and scripting errors on your site.
11. SauceLabs Α cloud-based cross-browser testing tool that allows you to securely test websites, web apps, and mobile applications across thousands of desktop & mobile browser and OS combinations in the cloud.

Cross Browser Testing

Cross-browser testing is the method used to ensure that a website or web application functions across different browsers. It is a type of non-functional software testing where web applications are checked for support across different browsers and devices. There are situations when a website/web application that works perfectly fine in one browser crashes in another browser. This is because that particular website/web application has not been extensively tested on other major browsers. Automated cross-browser testing tools are important to ensure that everyone who visits your site sees it the way you intended them to, even if they are using different browsers.

Choosing the Right Cross Browser Testing Tool

With various automated browser testing tools, choosing the right one for your web project can be challenging. First, you need to identify your use cases and look specifically for the tools that best address your needs.

To guide you in the process of choosing the right tool, we’re going to review the 10 best automated cross-browser testing tools.

The Best Automated Browser Testing Tools

1. Site24x7 Synthetic Monitoring (FREE TRIAL)

Site24x7 Synthetic Monitoring is a service on the cloud SaaS platform of Site24x7. This system can launch tests from more than 120 locations around the world. This is a choice of locations – you don’t get all of them automatically. You also have to select how many launch locations you use because the more tests that you launch, the more you pay. Test frequency is another variable that is up to you with the highest frequency available at 30 seconds.

Key features and capabilities of Site24x7 Synthetic Monitoring include:

• Use a script language to simulate user activity to provoke interactive elements on a website.
• Record and playback actions on a site through a browser with the option to transfer the script to multiple remote launch sites.
• Import Selenium IDE test scripts and run them repeatedly in real Firefox and Chrome browsers.
• Implement API monitoring through JSONPath and XPath assertions to test components of mobile and web apps.
• A downloadable local tester to check on features of a website under development before releasing it to the world.

Site24x7 offers many plans and all of them provide access to the Synthetic Monitoring utility. Different plans include different allowances for test runs, which are suitable for the needs of small businesses, while larger companies pay for capacity expansions. The cloud service includes storage space for metrics and alerts can be set up for failed tests – this is particularly useful for uptime monitoring. You can try out the Site24x7 Synthetic Monitoring package with a 30-day free trial.

2. Smartbear TestComplete

TestComplete is a commercial cross-browser testing tool that prides itself on the easiest-to-use and automated testing platform. The platform is targeted at medium to large enterprises and allows you to create and run automated UI tests for desktop, mobile, and web applications. In addition, TestComplete supports team collaboration, time-efficiency (accelerates testing cycles), improves software quality, and ensures your applications function as intended.

Key features and capabilities of the TestComplete include:

• Test hybrid and native iOS and Android apps on multiple devices with full access to internal objects and methods.
• TestComplete device cloud gives you access to the newest devices and browsers in real-time.
• User interface functional test automation tool helps you create and run tests on any web application.
• Supports data-driven testing, keyword-driven testing, regression testing, continuous testing for DevOps, parallel testing, GUI object recognition to scale efforts and improve coverage.
• Access to 1500+ remote test environments to check for cross-browser and cross-device compatibility.

Licensing and pricing is based on either Node or Floating model. Node is for single user tests on physical machines only, while floating is for multiple users test on physical and virtual machines. A 30-day free trial is available to enable you to test run before purchase.

3. Smartbear CrossBrowserTesting

CrossBrowserTesting from Smartbear is a commercial tool that helps you find and document bugs on every browser before your customers do. The tool focuses on Selenium and Appium tests and allows you to test your website on 2000+ different desktop and mobile browsers. The tool is ideal for manual testers, DevOps, QA engineers, developers, and designers.

CrossBrowserTesting supports integrations with Selenium, Appium, Protractor, Capybara, NightWatch.JS, and other frameworks—allowing you to test and debug on live remote devices interactively, view your website in many browsers at once,  conduct automated tests, visual testing, parallel testing, and integrations with solutions like Jenkins allow agile teams to test more quickly.

Key features and capabilities of CrossBrowserTesting include:

• Access to 2050+ browser configurations including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, IE, Windows, OSX, iOS, and more
• Enables you to run Selenium and Appium cloud testing grid
• Supports automated scheduled screenshots and comparisons
• FireBug, Chrome dev tool, and other helpful debugging tools and extensions are all included
• Supports integrations with GitHub, Jenkins, TeamCity, and more.
• Promotes time efficiency in as little as 1/3 the time. using headless testing and codeless record & replay
• REST API allows you to use your command line to trigger test and success practically everything available on the tool.

Various licensing plans are available on an annual subscription basis. In addition, a free trial is available to enable you to test drive before making a purchase decision.

4. Browser Stack

Browser Stack is a commercial cross-browser testing tool that allows teams to create and run automated cross-browser compatibility testing on over 1,000 actual desktop and mobile devices in real-time. Through the power of the cloud, you can test your applications on browsers hosted on real devices with BrowserStack. Its services can be divided into two categories of cross-browser testing: website testing (interactive cross-browser testing, selenium testing, visual testing, and review) and application testing (interactive and automated mobile app testing).

Key features and capabilities of Browser Stack include:

• Instant access to 3000+ browsers and real iOS and Android devices.
• Zero setups and maintenance helps to speed up releases and improve time-efficiency
• Compliant with SOC2 with access to the most up-to-date browsers and devices at all times.
• Supports interactive cross-browser testing, selenium testing, visual testing and

review, interactive and automated mobile app testing

Various price plans are available on an annual subscription basis. In addition, a free trial is available to enable you to test drive before making a purchase decision.

5. Selenium Box

Selenium Box is an on-premise solution that helps organizations simplify their Selenium and Appium infrastructure for cross-browser and mobile tests. It allows automated web and mobile testing to be run behind the corporate firewall. Selenium Box can be deployed on your corporate servers or in your private cloud (only Linux OS is supported). The solution targets enterprises, financial, healthcare care organizations with high-security requirements, especially around data privacy.

Key features and capabilities of Selenium Box include:

• Scalability – Selenium Box is highly scalable and grows with your needs
• Maintenance – free means that every browser is pre-tested for functionality and compatibility before making them available for Selenium Box
• CI / Continuous testing – built for use in a CI / CD environment
• Browser interaction – Selenium Box supports manual access to all browsers
• Reporting and monitoring – advanced reporting for system usage, monitoring tools, and integrations are available

Licensing is based on an annual or multi-year subscription.

6. Katalan Studio

Katalan Studio is among the most popular cross-browser testing tools. It is built on top of the open-source automation frameworks Selenium, Appium with a specialized IDE interface for web, API, mobile, and desktop application testing. Katalon Studio allows you to run automated tests of UI elements, including pop-ups, iFrames, and wait-time to detect errors and inconsistencies.

Katalan compatibility testing checks whether or not the website and web applications are compatible with various browsers and devices. This includes browser and OS compatibility testing, along with mobile browsing and printing options testing. Katalon’s main advantage is its ease of deployment and support for integrations with other tools such as SauceLabs, BrowserStack, Selenium Grid, and others. It can be deployed on Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Katalan provides flexible licensing plans with free plans for small teams and advanced plans for businesses and enterprises.

7. LambdaTest

LambdaTest is a cloud-based platform that allows you to perform automated cross-browser testing on 2000+ real browsers and operating systems online on LambdaTest’s scalable cloud grid. LambdaTest also supports automating Selenium scripts and even performing live interactive testing in natural browser environments. As a result, you can test your website or web app on a wide range of Windows and Mac OS, including legacy and latest desktop and mobile browsers.

Key features and capabilities of LambdaTest include:

• Automated testing: Perform automatic browser or Selenium tests at scale on 2000+ desktop and mobile browsers.
• Live testing: Perform interactive cross-browser testing on 2000+ real mobile and desktop browsers running on the actual OS.
• Mobile app testing: Perform live interactive testing and debugging your mobile apps on Android and iOS devices.
• Cypress testing: Perform End-to-End Cypress testing in a cloud on 40+ different browser environments.
• Geolocation testing: Test from different locations to ensure a consistent experience across all locations.
• You have integrated developer tools, including your CI/CD pipeline, to aid in the debugging of errors during live testing.

LambdaTest offers both freemium and premium licensing options based on an annual or multi-year subscription.

8. Ranorex Studio

Ranorex Studio is a commercial GUI automation tool that accelerates browser compatibility testing to ensure a consistent user experience across browsers and devices. It is built on Microsoft’s .NET framework and supports standard programming languages such as C# and VB.NET to edit recordings or create custom tests. Ranorex Studio is ideal for large enterprises and other organizations engaged in heavy web-based applications testing. Every test run in Ranorex Studio produces a report detailing the test execution, including visual screenshots for validation.

Key features and capabilities of Ranorex Studio include: 

• Cross-browser testing: Run automated tests against multiple browsers on real devices as well as emulators.
• Parallel testing: Save time by testing in parallel using Selenium grids such as Sauce Labs.
• Visual testing: Validate responsive design and guard against regressions by comparing screenshots.
• Ranorex codeless testing: Allows non-programmers to apply test automation to their projects.
• Mobile testing on Android and iOS
• Selenium WebDriver integration

Various licensing and price plans are available on an annual subscription basis. In addition, a free trial is available to enable you to test drive before making a purchase decision.

9. Selenium 

Selenium is a free and open-source tool that enables and supports the automation of web browsers. Selenium is arguably the only free automation testing tool on the market that can compete with premium alternatives. Over the years, Selenium has grown to become the de facto product in QA testing. It provides “extensions to emulate user interaction with browsers, a distribution server for scaling browser allocation, and the infrastructure for implementations of the W3C WebDriver specification that lets you write interchangeable code for all major web browsers”.

Selenium is made up of the following tools and libraries that enable and support the automation of web browsers: 

• Selenium WebDriver: An interface that uses browser automation APIs to allow users to write instruction sets that can be run interchangeably in many browsers.
• Selenium  IDE: This is the tool that allows users to develop their Selenium test cases.
• Selenium Grid: This allows you to run parallel tests on multiple machines and browsers simultaneously.

Selenium can be deployed on Windows, Linux, and macOS; and is freely available for download.

10. Browsera

Browsera is an online-based premium automated browser compatibility testing tool. It tests and reports cross-browser layout differences and scripting errors on your site. In addition, Browsera will notify you of possible cross-browser layout problems it finds while trying your site, including a report detailing which pages have potential problems. Browsera does not require any installation; all you need is a web browser to use the service.

Key features and capabilities of Browsera include:

• Test dynamic pages and pages behind a login
• Automatically detect cross-browser layout issues by comparing the output of each browser.
• After your test is over, JavaScript errors from each browser are collected and reported.
• The site crawling feature allows you to test all of your site’s different pages.

Licensing is based on the number of pages per month. Various price plans are available on an annual or monthly subscription basis. All subscription plans come with a 30-day free trial to enable you to test drive the product.

11. SauceLabs

SauceLabs is a cloud-based cross-browser testing tool that allows you to securely test websites, web apps, and mobile applications across thousands of desktop & mobile browser and OS combinations in the cloud. SauceLabs supports thousands of browsers and operating systems, mobile emulators/simulators, and real mobile devices. In addition, SauceLabs works with automation frameworks such as Selenium, Appium, Espresso, or XCUI to help you test faster.

Key features and capabilities of SauceLabs include: 

• Connect proxy allows you to test data and apps from behind your firewall
• Integrates with Github, Jenkins, Bamboo, Teamcity, CircleCI, and other popular CI/CD tools
• Test against thousands of the latest iOS and Android devices on a public or private cloud
• Screenshots and video recordings make identifying issues and sharing the results quick and easy
• Supports mobile emulators and simulators along with desktop to speed testing

A 28-day free trial is available to enable you to test drive before making a purchase decision.