BrowserStack and Sauce Labs are industry-leading, cloud-based web and mobile testing platforms for developers. Both platforms offer quality features to streamline and simplify testing across browsers and devices.
If you’re choosing between BrowserStack and Sauce Labs, looking at the basic features won’t cut it. You need to dig deeper and identify where the two vendors differ.
In our Sauce Labs vs BrowserStack comparison, we’ll explore each platform’s features, performance, and pricing and elaborate on its most important differences. We’ll also explain how to pick the right tool for your team’s testing requirements.
Let’s get started.
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BrowserStack overview
BrowserStack is a testing platform for development teams to test their websites and mobile applications on an array of browsers, real devices, and operating systems. The platform allows manual and automated testing in real-user environments.
It offers the following key features:
- Live: Manual cross-browser testing on 3000+ real browsers and devices across desktop and mobile.
- Automate: Fully managed cloud solution that leverages Selenium for automated testing.
- App Live: Cloud-based testing and debugging for mobile applications.
- App Automate: Automated mobile app testing across real iOS and Android phones.
These testing capabilities help developers ensure their applications work on any device or browser. By identifying issues early, the tests can accelerate development and help QA teams improve user experience.
Sauce Labs overview
Sauce Labs is a cloud-based web and mobile application testing solution that supports a wide range of browsers and devices and uniquely provides emulators and simulators.
It offers the following key features:
- Sauce Cross Browser: Cloud-based live testing on thousands of emulators/simulators, real devices, and browser/OS configurations.
- Platform for Test: A unified platform for automated web testing and error monitoring.
- Sauce Mobile: A real device testing cloud for application testing on different mobile platforms.
- Sauce Low Code: AI-driven low-code automated testing.
Sauce Labs supports continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) workflows, integrations with popular CI tools, visual testing, and more.
Now that we have a basic idea of each testing tool’s offerings let’s compare their coverage, testing, performance, and pricing in detail.
Sauce Labs vs BrowserStack: A detailed comparison
Let’s look at the main factors that differentiate Sauce Labs vs BrowserStack.
Device and browser coverage
Sauce Labs
Sauce Labs has 1,700+ emulators/simulators and 7,500+ real devices for mobile testing. Its emulators allow developers to perform quick tests, while actual hardware can be used for interactive manual testing.
The devices and browsers within the Sauce Labs’ device cloud are continuously updated to the latest versions, ensuring broad compatibility during tests.
BrowserStack
BrowserStack boasts one of the largest collections of devices, offering a staggering 20,000+ real devices for running tests. It also supports the latest browsers and operating systems.
BrowserStack’s real devices enable developers and QA teams to run apps on actual hardware to assess their user experience and catch issues that might not appear on emulators or simulators.
While both Sauce Labs and BrowserStack have similar coverage, the range of devices BrowserStack offers is a significant benefit since testers access diverse hardware without maintaining an in-house device lab.
Testing
Sauce Labs
Apart from standard manual and automated testing capabilities, Sauce Labs has Sauce Performance — a unique feature that simplifies performance monitoring for QAs by establishing baselines for each tested URL.
Unlike other platforms, Sauce Labs users can also test on emulators and simulators.
The cloud-based testing platform is great for mobile app testing. Sauce Labs enables optimized beta testing of mobile apps and streamlined app distribution so teams can release high-quality apps faster.
Sauce Labs Low-Code also leverages AI and a Natural Language Processing (NLP) engine to allow users to create and run tests with little to no programming experience. This feature autonomously creates test cases and boasts auto-maintenance capabilities.
BrowserStack
BrowserStack, on the other hand, is primarily used for extensive manual testing, allowing developers to assess their websites under different conditions in real time. It supports functional testing, regression testing, and real-environment testing. It also has automated cross-browser testing and low-code test automation.
The platform enables visual regression testing with Percy — a tool for automatically detecting visual regressions. It helps ensure that applications look and function correctly and is particularly useful for front-end developers and designers focused on maintaining brand consistency across platforms.
Unlike Sauce Labs, BrowserStack supports accessibility testing by default. This test is used to assess whether users with disabilities can use the application seamlessly.
It also supports geolocation testing so that QA teams can test their websites’ functionality in specific locations.
Performance and reliability
Sauce Labs
Sauce Labs’ robust testing infrastructure is built for parallel execution, so teams can run many concurrent tests without worrying about crashes or slowed-down processes.
It also offers detailed error reporting and monitoring features so QAs can catch bugs and errors early, analyze performance metrics, and make improvements.
Its user reviews are generally excellent, with 4.5 stars on Capterra and 4.3 stars on G2. Users highlight the tool’s intuitive interface and the ability to integrate seamlessly with popular testing frameworks and environments.
BrowserStack
BrowserStack also has a scalable and reliable testing infrastructure, with an added focus on ease of integration. With over 50,000 customers, the platform has extensive test coverage and an intuitive user interface.
Users can automate their testing process by installing the SDK for their preferred framework. They can customize tests and capture detailed logs, including screenshots and videos.
BrowserStack has similar ratings on Capterra (4.5 stars) and G2 (4.5 stars). Users like the ability to test across devices and use geolocation testing to assess websites in particular locations.
Integrations
Sauce Labs
Sauce Labs integrates with most major CI/CD, collaboration, analytics, and monitoring tools, including Selenium, Appium, Jenkins, and Cypress. These integrations allow users to add more functionality, like accessibility and email testing.
For example, QA testers can identify usability barriers for people with disabilities by running accessibility tests via Sauce Labs’ integration with Deque Axe.
BrowserStack
BrowserStack integrates with more tools than Sauce Labs, including platforms like Selenium, Jenkins, and Cypress, so users can simplify automation and test management.
It emphasizes simplicity and faster testing time. For example, users can harness BrowserStack’s Selenium Grid to run parallel tests or their Jenkins plug-in to manage and debug tests.
Pricing
Sauce Labs
Sauce Labs has three pricing plans:
- Live Testing: Starts at $39 per month. Manual, cross-browser web and mobile testing.
- Virtual Cloud: Starts at $149 per month. Automated and manual testing on thousands of browsers and mobile emulators/simulators.
- Real Device Cloud: Starts at $199 per month. Automated and manual testing across real mobile devices.
- Enterprise: Custom quote. Unlimited automated testing minutes, access to its private device cloud, premium support, Sauce Connect, and a secure tunneling protocol.
All Sauce Labs plans allow unlimited users and testing minutes but only one parallel test. Users must pay extra for each additional parallel test.
BrowserStack
BrowserStack’s pricing structures are differentiated by the products they offer. Each product has four plans. For example, the product Automate, which gives access to their fully managed browser automation grid, is priced as follows:
- Desktop: Starts at $129 per month. Automated and manual testing on 3,000+ desktop and browser combinations.
- Desktop and Mobile: Starts at $199 per month. Manual and automated testing on browsers and 20,000+ real mobile devices.
- Desktop and Mobile Pro: Starts at $249 per month. Unlocks advanced testing features, including voice input, payments, and web front-end performance.
- Enterprise: Custom quote. Advanced access control, IP whitelisting, usage analytics, and priority support.
All of these BrowserStack plans allow for unlimited users. You also get complimentary access to Live Team, its manual testing solution for teams, for up to 5 users for three months. Like Sauce Labs, BrowserStack also charges extra for parallel testing.
Choosing between Sauce Labs vs BrowserStack
BrowserStack vs Sauce Labs is a tough choice since both are great solutions with comprehensive test coverage and advanced testing capabilities. Ultimately, it depends on your use cases.
Sauce Labs is better suited for mobile app testing because it supports testing from development to post-release. It’s the ideal choice for QAs and developers who need emulators and are focused on performance testing.
BrowserStack is a trusted, scalable solution that is best for in-depth real-device testing, geolocation testing, and visual regression testing. It offers more devices, advanced features, and proprietary tools to speed up debugging.
Both tools support parallel execution, but since Sauce Labs charges less for each parallel test and supports unlimited testing minutes, it can be more cost-effective than BrowserStack.
Get the best of both worlds with Ghost Inspector
Through our comparison of Sauce Labs vs BrowserStack you’ve seen both are excellent web testing tools, but one solution outperforms both when it comes to ease of use, codeless automated testing, and parallel testing: Ghost Inspector.
Ghost Inspector is a codeless automated testing platform for QA teams to easily create, run, and schedule tests. Unlike the other two platforms, Ghost Inspector offers unlimited parallel tests at no extra charge, boosting test execution times and developer productivity.
Ghost Inspector also provides advanced scheduling, geolocation testing, email testing, and visual testing, making it a favorite among users. Our solution is rated highest on G2 (4.6 stars) and on par with our competitors on Capterra (4.3 stars).
Book a free demo or start a 14-day free trial today to learn how Ghost Inspector can boost your testing. You can also contact us to get custom discounts on specific plans.
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