In the era of software development, automation testing has become a major part of the software development life cycle. You must have come across various automation testing tools which helps writing end to end test for a web application. Among those, Cypress and WebDriverIO are very popular in current times as testing tools.
However, you must have felt ambiguous about choosing the right automation testing for your web application. A detailed comparison between Cypress and WebDriverIO can be a great way to help you to make the right decision. The present blog will give complete information on Cypress vs WebDriverIO. Basically, the choice of automation testing tools depends on your specific needs and preference. However, it is important to have a clear knowledge of the tools to get the right path. So, let’s get started.
Table of Contents
Introduction to Cypress
Cypress is a popular tool mainly for the End to End UI test automation and Web integration. It is regarded as the next-generation front-end testing tools build basically for the modern web. It is constructed on Node.js and comprises of packaged as nmp module.
It makes use of JavaScript for writing tests and supports only Chrome and Electron. However, Cypress 4.0.0 is now known to support Mozilla Firefox browsers and Microsoft Edge. It is a great step toward cross-browser testing.
Introduction to WebDriverIO
WebDriverIO is an automation framework developed on top of Appium and Selenium for automating mobile and web applications. It allows writing super easy Selenium tests using JavaScript for the BDD and TDD test framework. It also runs on Node.js and allows automation of any application based on modern frameworks like Angular, React, and Polymer.
It follows the web standard protocol WebDriver and Chrome DevTools Protocol. It has various ready-to-use Plugins which help with the creation of a stable and maintainable test suite.
Requirement of comparing WebDriverIO and Cypress
You might be thinking why are comparing Cypress and WebDriverIO. Cypress vs WebDriverIO is required to be explored based on their detailed comparison as both is a trending tools in the software development environment. Both are known to support the automation of modern web applications and thus will help the tester to decide on appropriate tools for their project.
You must be knowing that WebDriverIO has been in the market long before Cypress existed. Over the year, WebDriverIO has added new aspects like Native Apps Testing and recording of video. In 2014, Cypress was launched and gained popularity due to its user-friendly nature. This made Cypress a major competitor in a testing environment. Hence, it will be significant in conducting a detailed comparison of Cypress vs WebDriverIO.
Further, it is often noted that many testers and software developers question the difference between Cypress vs WebDriverIO. The effective way to answer this is to perform a detailed comparison of the Cypress vs WebDriverIO.
Cypress vs WebDriverIO
We will have a discussion on the detailed comparison of Cypress vs WebDriverIO by the below aspects.
Overview of the tools
Cypress is a well-known testing tool that is structured on NodeJS and give the ability to write test script with the use of JavaScript and Typescript languages. It has gained popularity due to the features of debuggability, screen capture, and automatic recording of the test. Compared to WebDriverIO, it is an end to end testing framework based on Node JS. This tool also uses JavaScript and Typescript languages for writing test scripts. In such a context, Cypress and WebDriverIO are similar.
However, it is crucial to consider that Cypress operates on any front-end framework or website and provides only front-end automation for a web application. Comparatively, WebDriverIO is not only for front-end testing, it allows you to do end to end testing. It also manages a browser or a mobile application with just a few lines of code.
In nutshell, Cypress can be named as Javascript Testing Framework and WebDriverIO as a Browser Testing tool.
Cross-browser testing
The major difference between Cypress and WebDriverIO is related to cross browser testing. Cypress is limited to conducting the test in a different browser. Currently, it supports only Firefox, Edge, Electron, Brave, and Chrome. However, WebDriverIO can be configured using WebDriver Protocol or ChromeDevTools Protocol. It allows testing for Internet Explorer, Edge, Safari, Chrome, and Firefox. Thus, this is the key reason for picking up WebDriverIO over Cypress.
Popularity and trends
Comparing the trends and popularity will shows which tool is most preferred by the testers. Here are some points.
- Cypress has been used by more than 3.5 million users, but WebDriverIO got only approx. 1 million users.
- Comparing the GitHub star, Cypress stands at 42.2k stars and WebDriverIO has 7.9k stars
- The Fork of Cypress in GitHub is 2.7k while, WebDriverIO has 2.2k only.
- The total issue of Cypress in GitHub is 2.8k and WebDriverIO has only 151 issues.
- Weekly downloads of Cypress are 2,985,982 and WebDriverIO has a total of 873,592 downloads.
The above data shows that Cypress is more popular and in the latest trends than WebDriverIO.
Key feature comparison
Cypress and WebDriverIO follow a simple and friendly setup process. You just need to download the node package with the use of npm and initiate the testing process. Both have an easier approach to reading and understanding tests. However, Cypress is more readable because WebDriverIO has the asynx-await syntax which can be ambiguous for non-JS users.
Further, you can easily customize the WebDriverIO framework as per your need, however, Cypress does not allow such features. The similarity is also noted in Cypress and WebDriverIO as they have built-in wait and retries options when searching for elements on DOM.
Test runner
Cypress is such a tool that comes with an interactive test runner and it is more user-friendly. Due to such a feature, most of the users prefer this. However, WebDriverIO makes use of a CLI test runner just like other testing tools. This does not make it different from the crowd.
Debugging
WebDriverIO faces challenges in debugging the error found in the testing process than Cypress. In this case, you have to use browser.debug() command for pausing the testing and initiating inspection of the browser. This command line interface will shift into REPL mode which allows you to fiddle around with elements and commands on the page. This will likely increase the timeout of the test runner which augments the testing time.
In Cypress, debugging is much easier. It provides various types of ways to debug and evaluate the test scripts. Cypress Debugger gives readable error messages which allow the testers to debug quickly. It has the features of stack trace, pause test, console logs, and browser developer tools control.
Assertions
Cypress is known to support only the Mocha test framework. However, as the external plugin, it can support Cucumber. On the other hand, WebDriverIO comes with the support of Cucumber, Jasmine, and Mocha as built-in.
Parallel testing
Parallel testing allows to testing of the application or part of it simultaneously. It allows multiple tests to be run on different real device combinations and browser configurations at the same time. It helps in lowering testing time. Cypress has the feature of Parallelizing the tests but only in its paid versions. However, in WebDriverIO, the tester can configure it to launch multiple instances and implement tests parallelly.
Technicality
Technically, Cypress and WebDriverIO are different. For example, relating to the iFrame Support, Cypress is something where automating iFrame scenarios is difficult. However, there is no such restriction with WebDriverIO on iFrame. If you are a tester, you can easily automate iframe-based scenarios with the use of simple web driver commands.
Cypress and WebDriverIO can support CSS selectors. However, unlike WebDriverIO, Cypress does not have XPath locator support. You have to depend on the additional plugin if want to use XPath. With WebDriverIO, there XPath is supported as default.
Cypress and WebDriverIO are able to support Shadow DOMs. Cypress has the competence to visit numerous origins in a solo test via the cy.origin() command. WebDriverIO does not restrict origins. It does not matter much because testers can easily automate it unconditionally.
Reporters
WebDriverIO is known to support multiple reporters while Cypress has great limitations in this. For example, WebDriverIO can be extendable to configure known reporters which include Allure Reporter, Concise Reporter, Dot Reporter, JUnit Reporter, Sumologic Reporter, Video Reporter, Mochawesome Reporter, Markdown Reporter, Timeline Reporter, Delta Reporter Reporter, CucumberJS JSON Reporter, HTML Reporter, Report Portal Reporter, Spec Reporter, Sumologic Reporter. While Cypress has default reporter Spec. Extendable Junit, Mocha supported reporters and custom reporters.
Screenshot and recording
Cypress and WebDriverIO can be easily configured to take screenshots of the test. This helps the tester to maintain a record of the test at a specific point in time. Further, testers are able to record the test on video. This attracts the testers as they can replay it to validate the test, the error point, and the way the test is run. However, the major drawback of the WebDriverIO is that it does not support video recording of the test. If you want this to be done, out of the box, you have to configure it.
Auto-wait
Cypress has the ability to automatically waits for the elements to load prior to performing assertions and commands. There is no requirement to specify additional waits. Also, WebDriverIO has a built-in mechanism which automatically clearly waits on the element prior to interacting with it.
Multiple tabs
WebDriverIO is well known for its ability to switch to and from different and multiple windows and tabs. However, with Cypress, you cannot do this.
Dashboard feature
Another difference between Cypress and WebDriverIO lies in the premium features of the dashboard. Cypress has a commercial solution that allows testers to perform an in-depth analysis of tests in a single dashboard. However, such a feature is unavailable in WebDriverIO.
Mobile support
Cypress does not have native mobile support as it is built only on the Web. Whereas, WebDriverIO has native mobile support and can be easily integrated with Appium for the automation of mobile applications.
Conclusion
The discussion on Cypress and WebDriverIO has given you the required knowledge on the testing tool. It will help to prefer which tool to choose and or not. You only need to check your requirement and the tools which satisfy your needs. In order to use Cypress or WebDriverIO, you can easily access LambdaTest which is a cross-browser automation testing platform. You can integrate LambdaTest with Cypress to execute testing on the cloud across more than 40 browser versions. Further, with LambdaTest you can also perform Selenium testing with WebDriverIO.