Best Browserstack Alternatives For Automated Testing

BrowserStack is a cross-browser testing software that allows developers to integrate tools to automate visual and live testing across websites and mobile apps.

BrowserStack provides a single platform for developers to manage all their browser tests from a single location, and it integrates with popular development tools like Git and Jira.

It’s also great for QA teams who must test across multiple browsers, platforms, and devices.

Some tools bring extra functionality and have a better price than Browserstack. We’ll cover 4 of the best Browserstack alternatives and look into their unique functionalities, features, and pricing.

LambdaTest - Browserstack Alternative for Cross Browser Testing in the Cloud

LambdaTest is the biggest Browserstack competitor on this list. It can run tests on over 3000 browsers, real devices, and operating systems.

Moreover, LambdaTest comes with integrated debugging, local hosted web testing, and geolocation testing.

LambdaTest Features

You can accelerate your go-to-market strategy using LambdaTest's powerful cloud testing platform and features:

Automated Testing - Run Selenium, Cypress, Appium, Hyperexecute, Playwright and Puppeteer tests at scale on 3000+ browsers and devices.
HyperExecute - A blazing fast LambaTest exclusive platform that speeds up test execution on cloud.
Live Testing - Perform live interactive cross-browser testing of your public or locally hosted websites and web apps.
Mobile App Testing - Test and debug your mobile apps on many Android and iOS devices, all while performing live interactions.
Online Selenium Test Automation - Run your Selenium test automation scripts across the online Selenium Grid of desktop, Android, and iOS mobile browsers.
Ready to Scale - LambdaTest helps you accelerate your pipeline from dev to release to get faster feedback on code changes and manage flaky tests.

LambdaTest also integrates with many tools you might already use, like Bitbucket, Asana, Slack, GitLab, Jira, and more.

LambdaTest Pricing

Pricing plans depend on what types of tests you plan on running.

You can start using LambaTest free of charge for manual live interactive cross-browser tests. However, this plan only lets you run 1 test at a time. You'll also get just 60 minutes of real-time browser testing per month, broken down into six 10-minute sessions.

You will also get 100 minutes of web and mobile automation testing, valid for 15 days from the moment you sign up.

The cheapest manual testing plan starts at $15 per month. This plan lets you run a single test at a time, but it does not have any other usage restrictions.

To run automation tests on real devices, you must go for the Web & Mobile Browser on Real Device plan, which costs $128 per month.

On the other hand, if you want to test your mobile apps, you must go with a dedicated Native App Automation plan. This goes for $125 per month and grants you access to many real mobile devices from brands like Apple (iPhone/iPad), Samsung, Google Pixel, OnePlus, Oppo, Vivo, and more.

The next alternative focuses exclusively on mobile app testing, so if that's what you are looking for, keep reading.

Kobiton - Browserstack Alternative for Mobile Apps Testing

Kobiton is a Browserstack alternative focused specifically on mobile app testing. It relies on real devices combined with next-gen automation to drastically speed up testing.

Kobiton Features

Kobiton grants you access to hundreds of real devices in the cloud with performance that mimics having the device in hand. That's not the only thing that makes Kobiton a great Browserstack alternative, but rather the number of extra features that can speed up and enhance testing:

Highly Responsive Natural Gestures - You can configure Kobiton to tap, swipe, and scroll naturally.
Root Cause Analysis - Kobiton generates detailed logs featuring all important system metrics and gestures performed in the form of full videos and screenshots.
Remote ADB Debugging - Access cloud or local devices directly from your IDE.
Automatic UI/UX Comparison - Kobiton compares your app with the top 50 apps to automatically recommend UI/UX improvements according to the best practices.
Performance Reports - Test your app's performance to get a detailed report on improving loading speed.
Outlier Detection - Kobiton uses a proprietary AI Engine to catch outliers and anomalies.

To speed up the QA process, you can integrate Kobiton with Visual Studio and Jetbrains, as well as Jira, Azure DevOps, Jenkins, Figma, and many more.

Kobiton Pricing

Kobiton provides a free trial for any of their plans, after which you'll have to pick from one of their four plans.

The cheapest, Start Up plan goes for $75/month and comes with 500 minutes of testing per month. You'll also get 5 Appium exports.

Now, if you need more than that, you'll have to spend a minimum of $3,960 per year and go with the Accelerate plan. This plan will give you up to 3000 minutes of monthly testing and 10 Appium exports.

SmartBear BitBar - Browserstack Alternative for Web App Testing

BitBar from SmartBear is a great Browserstack alternative if you don't want to stress over how many minutes of live testing you have left. Unlike the previous alternatives, all BitBar's plans feature unlimited live testing minutes and unlimited users.

BitBar Features

BitBar grants you access to tens of real mobile devices, all of the most common desktop browsers, and powerful debugging tools. It's a great option if you want to get your web app to market as fast as possible.

BitBar comes with all of the features you need to ensure your web app is bug-free:

Test Local Or Staged Apps - test your app in staging, behind a firewall, or on your local machine.
Simulate Accurate User Scenarios - test across thousands of browsers and real mobile devices.
Easily Find And Share Bugs - BitBar helps you capture screenshots, videos, and logs and share them with your team.
Test Across Frameworks - supports Selenium, Appium, and any native mobile test automation framework in all languages
Spend Less Time Testing - you can run automated tests in parallel across real devices with cloud-side execution.
Reduce Configuration Time - BitBar's cloud-side execution requires less time to set up compared to client-side testing.

All these features make BitBar a great Browserstack alternative, but its pricing model is what makes it stand out.

BitBar Pricing

BitBar is free to use if you want to test Open Source projects. Otherwise, pricing plans start at $47 per month per parallel test.

This will grant you unlimited live testing minutes and unlimited users, many real devices, and browsers.

For $155 per month per parallel test, you will get access to headless browsers and be able to run Selenium tests or tests created in TestComplete.

The most expensive plan will cost you $212 per month per parallel test. This plan lets you run scripted automation tests and includes one live parallel with every automated parallel test.

You can also save 25% on any plan if you pay yearly.

So far, the alternatives we have covered are focused on live and automated testing of mobile and web apps. You can use them to test complex behavior and uncover functional bugs, but they might be a bit much if you simply want to ensure your website loads correctly on different viewport sizes.

Urlbox - Best Browserstack Alternative For Website Render Testing And Archiving

Urlbox is a blazing-fast website screenshot service API. You can use it to capture and save screenshots of any website in virtually any viewport size.

Urlbox Features

Urlbox is a robust automated screenshot capture solution. It has extensive documentation and official client libraries for the most common programming languages (Ruby, PHP, Python, Node.JS, and many more), which makes it a breeze to integrate it into your existing application or workflow.

You can be sure the screenshots it captures look exactly like the website you are testing because Urlbox uses the most advanced rendering engine available today.

Here are some of Urlbox's features that make it a great Browserstack alternative for website render testing:

set up a custom user agent
supports web fonts and emojis
tunnel the request through any proxy
automatically trigger lazy loading elements
block ads or hide any element based on its CSS selector
click on or hover over elements before taking a screenshot
set cookies to get around cookie walls and authenticated pages
wait to ensure a specific element is loaded before taking a screenshot
handles infinite scrolling pages, scroll hijacking, and 100% height background images.

These combined features enable Urlbox to render any website on any viewport size exactly as users see it. But the best part about Urlbox is that it can take you less than 5 minutes to get it up and running, not to mention it costs a fraction of the most basic Browserstack plan.

Urlbox Pricing

Paid plans start at $19/month but scale to 10 million renders per year and beyond.

What Is The Best Browserstack Alternative?

The best Browserstack Alternative for you depends on the product type you want to test:

LambdaTest is the most famous alternative, featuring thousands of real devices and browsers.
Kobiton is perhaps the best option if you are looking to test mobile apps.
BitBar can be your best option if you want to test a web app.
Urlbox is your best choice if you want to test and record how a website renders on different viewports.

Ultimately, you should consider how much time you want to invest in setting up your testing workflow, how complex your product is, and how much money you want to spend on a testing platform.