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Appium vs BrowserStack comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Appium
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
Mobile Development Platforms (8th), Regression Testing Tools (6th)
BrowserStack
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
Functional Testing Tools (2nd), AI-Augmented Software-Testing Tools (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

AS
Independent consultant, at OpenText
Efficient mobile testing with intuitive emulation capabilities and a user-friendly interface
Initial setup for Appium (especially for iOS) is not beginner-friendly.Consumes too much of your host machine's resources, potentially slowing down the machine.Appium Inspector often lacks deep insight or crashes with certain app builds. Improve test flakiness by intelligently selecting robust self-healing locators,simplified installers, better documentation, GUI-based config management,smart wait mechanisms and better failure logs.
CR
Test Software Development Engineer at uShip, Inc.
Streamlined testing experience with valuable features but high costs prompt a look into alternatives
In terms of improvements, they can make it snappier. Everything kind of works. They have locked down the phones, which is problematic because there are some test cases that require access to things that they don't give you access to, which is understandable. However, being able to have more granular access to the OS would be a good feature. BrowserStack is very expensive and they keep increasing their cost, which is absolutely ridiculous, especially when someone like LambdaTest is coming through for literal thousands of dollars less, with the same services. The amount of what LambdaTest has to offer for their price point seems to be a better financial choice for any company at this point. I haven't used LambdaTest yet; we are exploring options with other providers at this time, and LambdaTest has been the only one that's provided any kind of cost-saving benefit while not losing any of the functionality that we expect to have with these products. BrowserStack is really expensive, which is super annoying. Anytime you want something new, it costs an exorbitant amount. We just attempted to increase our seats and they wanted almost double what we were paying, which was insane because it wasn't double the seats. Companies need to make money, but they also need to work with their customers because otherwise, they'll lose them to competitors like LambdaTest who offer similar services for significantly less.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Appium is it supports iOS and AOS and is open-source."
"The way Appium server interacts with mobile apps is fantastic. It provides all the information about the elements inside the app, Android as well as iOS. I can interact with the element quickly, just type some text or get some text values from the element - whether it's a drop-down, or web text, or a native element."
"I haven't explored other solutions in this particular area, but what I like best about Appium is the fact that it shares functions with Selenium. The extension of Selenium functions allows me to use all of the methods that exist in that domain, and it just makes it simpler for me. I've been using Selenium for some time as well, so using Appium just seems like a natural fit for me."
"The best feature of Appium is that it allows you to inspect the element. With the Appium Inspector, you don't have to install another application to do the inspection. I also like that Appium has Android device connectivity. Currently, most people use Appium as automation software, and I haven't found any other tool that's more powerful than Appium."
"Appium provides a record-and-play option, and the commands are the same as those that Selenium uses. So a person who has some exposure to Selenium will be able to write a piece of code in Appium."
"Appium helps me to do as much as much as I want to."
"It runs completely flawlessly and seamlessly every day."
"The most valuable feature is that it's easy to launch applications. Appium has everything that Selenium has. So many good tools support Appium. We can take some Excel sheets and use them to fill out the text box that's in there. We can also take screenshots of failures."
"BrowserStack has positively impacted our organization by improving collaboration and showing quality improvements in releases, with the number of defects leaking into production significantly reduced."
"The product's initial setup phase was not very difficult."
"The setup was quite simple. The website easily explains how to set it up and if you want to integrate it with BMP tools there are online simple step tutorials."
"I've worked on testing integrations with BrowserStack, particularly with a platform called IT. This involves testing the registration process, including receiving verification codes on devices and phones. BrowserStack has been excellent for testing these integrations, providing a seamless workflow development experience."
"It is a stable solution. There's no lagging and jittering."
"The most valuable feature is that it provides parallel and cross-browser testing. It enables us to run tests on multiple browsers or devices simultaneously."
"It is a scalable solution."
"BrowserStack has lots of devices to choose from."
 

Cons

"Appium has problems with automated validations following iOS updates, causing us to have to validate manually."
"What needs improvement in Appium is its documentation. It needs to give more context on the libraries that Appium is using under the hood. For example, my team is using Appium for Android automation, and a lot of times, I feel that there's functionality that's available through the Appium interface, that exists within the UIAutomator, but there aren't a lot of useful or helpful resources on the internet to find that information, so it would be good to have some linkage with the underlying platform itself. Another room for improvement in Appium is that it's buggy sometimes. For example, at times, there's a bug in the inspector application that doesn't allow me to save my desired capability set, so it would be nice to get that bug fixed, but overall, Appium is a good tool. The Touch Actions functionality in Appium also needs improvement. For example, if I want to initiate a scroll on the device that I'm running Appium on, sometimes Swipe works, but in other situations, I have to explicitly use action chains, so I'm not too sure what's the better approach. What I'd like to see in the next version of Appium is a more intelligent and more intuitive AppiumLibrary, in terms of identifying menus and scroll bars, etc., because right now, I'm unsure if I have to do a lot of export reversals to get to the elements I'm looking for. It would be nice to have some functionality built in, which would allow me to easily get those exports."
"The deployment process and configuration are quite complex and require improvement."
"The challenging part with Appium is that installation can be a bit tricky. It can be challenging to set up in Android versus iOS environments."
"I rarely use Appium nowadays because I'm now at the managerial level, but the last time I used it, whenever I selected and clicked on an element, Appium was very slow. I tried to debug it, but I still couldn't find the problem, so this is an area for improvement in the solution. Another area for improvement lies with the connector and server. For example, the effort to get into the local machine sometimes causes the emulator to become slow, which then leads to failure in testing, and this is the usual issue I've encountered from Appium. An additional feature I'd like added to Appium in its next release is being able to do automation in iOS without using XPath and the name of the element. In Xcode, you can use previous UI tests for detecting elements, but in Appium, you have to use Xpath and the element name instead of being able to directly put the X-UiPath, which is what you can do in Xcode. In iOS as well, sometimes the element doesn't have a name or a path. Sometimes, there's also no element."
"If it had more facility for configuration it would be a spectacular solution."
"We haven't been able to fully leverage Appium for multiple reasons. I think number one is just that the tests take a long time to run. We have had some issues around just the results themselves and how predictable they are, but those are not issues with Appium directly."
"We need some bug fixes for nested elements."
"BrowserStack should work on its Internet connectivity although issues only occur occasionally."
"BrowserStack is scalable, but cost is significant for those living in Mexico."
"There is some stability issue in the product, making it in areas where improvements are required."
"Connectivity can sometimes mar the testing experience."
"Improvements for BrowserStack could include better usability when working under a private network or a VPN, since it can be challenging to access restricted URLs."
"Customer support could be better. We tried to implement and explore this product with the vendor or reseller's help, but we haven't had any good response about the product."
"We are having difficulty with the payment system for the BrowserStack team, as they only accept credit cards and we are encountering some issues."
"I would like to see clearer visibility."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Appium is free and open-source."
"The solution is free."
"The price is good for people to be able to make a favorable decision for the value."
"The solution is open source so it is free."
"This is an open source solution so it does not cost anything for licensing or otherwise."
"There is no license for this solution because it is open-source."
"The pricing of Appium is fine."
"It's open source, so it's completely free."
"The price is fine."
"BrowserStack could have a better price, but good things have a price."
"Compared to other solutions, BrowserStack is one of the cheapest."
"This solution costs less than competing products."
"The price of BrowserStack is high."
"My company found the product's license to be very compatible with our budget, and we pay 5,000 to 10,000 per year for licenses."
"As for pricing, I can't provide a clear evaluation as I'm not directly involved in those discussions."
"There are different licenses available that can be customized. You can select the features that you want only to use which can be a cost-benefit."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Insurance Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
University
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise19
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise14
 

Questions from the Community

Do you recommend Appium?
I do recommend Appium. It is an open-source solution and completely free of charge. We use Appium and Appium Studio as our base for any type of mobile automation for testing. It has a great interfa...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Appium?
My experience with Appium from a pricing perspective is favorable due to it being open source, making it a cost-effective option.
What needs improvement with Appium?
The deployment process and configuration are quite complex and require improvement. Additionally, the wait time functionality could be enhanced as I experienced failures with longer wait times.
What do you like most about BrowserStack?
The product's initial setup phase was not very difficult.
What needs improvement with BrowserStack?
Improvements for BrowserStack could include better usability when working under a private network or a VPN, since it can be challenging to access restricted URLs. There are times when running an au...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nuvizz, Coupa Software, Eventbrite, Evernote
Microsoft, RBS, jQuery, Expedia, Citrix, AIG
Find out what your peers are saying about Appium vs. BrowserStack and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,707 professionals have used our research since 2012.