There are many tools available to automate software testing. Some of these software testing tools are licensed and some are open source. These testing tools aid in areas of testing like, functional, regression, load, performance, stress & unit testing, web, mobile & desktop testing, etc.
Let’s take an in-depth look at 10 Best Open Source Testing Tools for Web and Mobile Apps.
1. JUnit
JUnit is an instance of the xUnit architecture’s unit testing framework for the Java programming language. It is a simple framework to write repeatable tests. JUnit features include assertions for testing expected results, test fixtures for sharing common test data and test runners for running tests. Also, it supports Test-driven development.
2. Mocha
Mocha JS JS is a JavaScript testing framework which runs on NodeJS. Despite being designed as an easy-to-use testing framework, Mocha simplifies JavaScript application testing by providing a number of robust features. In addition to supporting asynchronous testing, Mocha supports major web browsers and is compatible with several JavaScript libraries. These features further make Mocha different from other JavaScript testing frameworks.
3. Selenium
Selenium is the most popular automation testing framework for web applications. It is an open source tool having a strong community support. There are many test automation tools that are built on selenium framework.
Selenium supports multiple system environments (Windows, Mac, Linux) and browsers (Chrome, Firefox, IE, and Headless browsers). Its scripts can be written in various programming languages such as Java, Groovy, Python, C#, PHP, Ruby, and Perl.
While testers have flexibility with Selenium and they can write complex and advanced test scripts to meet various levels of complexity, it requires advanced programming skills and effort to build automation frameworks and libraries for specific testing needs.
4. Soap UI
SoapUI by Smartbear is an open source functional testing tool. It provides an end to end API test automation framework for SOAP and REST. Apart from API testing, it provides other features like simulation and mocking, invoking, web service inspection etc. Also, you can perform functional testing, load testing, and compliance testing. It’s possible to create test cases using graphical user interfaces or in an embedded fashion with either Apache Ant or Apache Maven.
5. Cucumber
Cucumber is a very fun and cool tool for writing automated acceptance tests to support software
development in the behavior-driven development (BDD) style. Cucumber gives the business, developers, and testers a way to collaborate and specify, in plain English, how the system should work. You can implement the tests using the same language you use to discuss them with the business.
6. Katalon Studio
Katalon studio is a powerful automation testing tool for Web, mobile and API testing. It provides a comprehensive set of features for test automation, including recording actions, creating test cases, generating test scripts, executing tests, reporting results, and integrating with many other tools in the software development life-cycle.
Katalon Studio runs on both Windows and MacOS, supporting automated testing of iOS and Android apps, web applications on all modern browsers, and API services. It can integrate with tools such as JIRA, qTest, Kobiton, Git, and Slack.
7. Calabash
Calabash is an automated acceptance testing framework for mobile apps. It’s cross-platform and supports both iOS and Android native apps. Calabash works by enabling automatic UI interactions within an application such as pressing buttons, inputting text, validating responses, etc. Calabash tests can be configured to run on hundreds of different Android and iOS devices, providing real-time feedback and validation across many different form factors, OS versions, OEM customizations and hardware specs.
8. Appium
Appium test automation framework is mainly intended for mobile applications. The good news is that it is an open source tool. It supports automation of native, hybrid and mobile web applications built for iOS and Android. Appium uses vendor-provided automation frameworks and is based on client/server architecture.
Appium is easy to install and use. it has gained huge popularity and stability over the last few years as one of the best mobile automation testing tools.
9. Apache JMeter
Apache JMeter is a performance testing tool written entirely in Java. It can be used to load test websites (HTTP, HTTPS) as well as Web Services (SOAP and REST) and Databases. The HTTP(S) Test Script Recorder can be used to record and replay requests.
Jmeter can be extended by plugins to support further functionalities and there is also a Jenkins plugin which means you can run performance tests as part of the delivery pipeline.
10. Meissa
Meissa is an open source distributed tests runner. It is built using the latest technologies such as .NET Core, ASPNET.Core and more. So it is completely cross-platform. It is designed to be programming language agnostic which means that it can run tests written in different languages. The tests execution tremendously speeds up from the distribution on multiple machines. However, it can be further improved by executing the tests in parallel on the tests agents. It can parallelize the tests even in a single container.
Conclusion
There are many advantages of using Open source testing tools. There is no direct cost involved and open source permits customization. However, there are certain limitations as well.
Lack of professional technical support, limited protocols support and script maintenance can be challenging at times.
In order to choose the right Open source testing tool, you should ensure that the tool is actively maintained, the type of tool matches the skills of your team and you have the experts in the team.
The features, benefits, and challenges offered by the tool should align with your testing requirements and organizational goals.
Author’s Bio :
Author Hardik Shah works as a Mobility Consultant at Simform having more than 8 years of experience. He is responsible for delivering high-quality products. Also, He often writes blogs on Automated functional testing.