Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Appium vs Sauce Labs 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 (6th), Regression Testing Tools (6th)
Sauce Labs
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
113
Ranking in other categories
Functional Testing Tools (12th), Test Automation Tools (15th)
 

Featured Reviews

Abhishek-Tiwari - PeerSpot reviewer
Has cross-platform flexibility and a record-and-play option
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. Appium has some limitations in terms of writing code using simulators and online cloud devices. I faced challenges with native based scenarios, battery turn out percentage, battery charging percentage, and memory capacity. The other challenge I faced involved codes changing from device to device. For example, the piece of code that works in iOS version 10.1 won't work in iOS version 6.0. In upcoming releases, if they can reduce some more of the dependencies like SDK, UIAutomator, etc., it would be great. That is, I'd like to see a consolidated package or bundle release that is much more user-friendly.
Joel Alonzo - PeerSpot reviewer
Metrics about testing across the company are easily accessible, and it's easy to get teams up and running
Multi-domain SSO is a big concern for us right now, especially as we've been merged into a larger company. I suddenly have teams coming from 20 different domains, and because the main master Sauce Labs account is locked down to one SSO domain, there are teams that can't run a test right now. I've heard they're working on a solution and they've been very communicative with us about it. A solution to that would help us a lot. The other issue is that when you're behind a corporate proxy and inside a corporate network, it's a nightmare in general. And the problem that we've come up against over and over again is that a lot of our network staff don't want to open up giant CIDR blocks to internal traffic. Opening it up to one endpoint which is Sauce Labs, through a little API is perfectly fine. That's one IP address and it's no big deal. But for their virtual machines they have one jump box and that jump box contains an entire CIDR block that changes each time the tunnel starts up. In other words, if every call went into one IP and that got bounced back to a load balancer or net gateway, that would help a lot too. When I go to the network team and say, "Hey, we're using a product, a piece of software, and I need an entire CIDR block opened," the first and almost eternal response to that will be "absolutely not." Getting things set up and running is always going to be a bit of a struggle within any corporate environment. Most of that is not Sauce Labs' fault, but the things I just mentioned are things they could do to help deal with that struggle.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's an open-source solution with a very large community and available documentation."
"It has great documentation and excellent community support."
"The automation part is extremely helpful in streamlining our processes."
"It can be used with different programming languages."
"We get a list that shows all devices that are connected to the system."
"Obviously because of automation, it reduces manual testing efforts."
"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 has easy interaction with mobile."
"The Failure Analysis feature is really important for us, one of the most important aspects. What is the root cause? Is it because we have a defect or is it that we have a test case that we need to fix or modify? The Failure Analysis is one of the main functionalities that I am exploring all the time in Sauce Labs... The Failure Analysis helps us to discover which test cases we need to work on."
"Sauce Labs helps us identify the root causes of bugs. The solution offers a lot of flexibility by providing the latest iOS and Android emulator versions, and even the Appium updates when it comes out in the market."
"It offers the single best solution for integrating deep automated browser testing in a CI/CD pipeline."
"Allows us to do JIRA Cloud and BambooHR Integration."
"Sauce Labs provides us with more combinations to test, so we can keep adding platforms and devices to our network. That's been a very seamless experience. Let's say there's an iOS or a private device we need. Sauce Labs has helped get all those set up when needed."
"Live device testing. As we all know, It's really hard and challenging to find/purchase many real devices to test because it will be costly and not all the team can be able to purchase all of the devices out there. We used to have a lot of real devices under our labs. However, it is really time-consuming to maintain those devices and make sure they are up to date with the testing requirements."
"Since this is an all-in-one testing site, we are able to take advantage of the browser OS combinations, mobile emulators and simulators, and real mobile devices. This is important to us since we have a variety of users, browsers, OS, etc."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to easily test multiple browsers and versions, as well as off-loading our local environments using the SauceCloud."
 

Cons

"Appium could improve by enabling record and run techniques similar to what they have in other licensing tools, such as Micro Focus. We have to all write the code, and then we can proceed."
"The deployment process and configuration are quite complex and require improvement."
"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."
"Appium has problems with automated validations following iOS updates, causing us to have to validate manually."
"One area where I think Appium could improve is in addressing security concerns for our data. Currently, we're unable to use cloud solutions like CloudForm due to security restrictions on our servers. We also face challenges in updating packages for the same reason. It would be beneficial if the solution could provide better support for auto-reporting and easier connections to mobile device farms."
"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."
"Stability is an area that needs some improvement."
"The user interface needs improvement because there are issues when setting up environment variables."
"Sauce Labs needs to be improved in the different platforms for farm testing, like iOS and Android farm testing and farm testing web browsers.​"
"The Jenkins Sauce OnDemand plugin could have more options available to tap into more of the custom capabilities Sauce Labs actually supports."
"They could improve the platform's customer support services."
"The only drawback is the speed, it will be good if we have a server in Asia too. It will be great if we can improve speed while initialization and execution."
"Running tests in the SauceCloud can take longer than running in a local environment."
"Progress towards reducing application testing time can be made."
"We had some specific features that we opened tickets on, although they were not earth-shattering. For example, the way the menus scroll could be improved because it does not have a bar, the way that people are used to, where you can move up and down."
"I would like for there to be more detail in regards to the quality of our code i.e. how many failures occurred, how many passed based on industry standard metrics, etc."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is open source so it is free."
"The solution is open source."
"The solution is open-source."
"Appian is open-source, which is not licensed."
"It's completely 100% free, and there are no hidden fees."
"The price is good for people to be able to make a favorable decision for the value."
"The pricing of Appium is fine."
"There is no license for this solution because it is open-source."
"We pay for a specific number of VMs."
"We did initially go with Sauce Labs because of the pricing and integration."
"Their pricing is incredibly competitive."
"Compared with other services, Sauce Labs is a bit expensive."
"When you reach the Enterprise licensing tier, base level being with 10 concurrent test sessions, pricing is essentially per-unit-of-concurrency thereafter with a relatively linear increase and not much benefit for "bulk"."
"The number of concurrent VMs that Sauce Labs provides depends on your purchase license level."
"Cost-wise, it's decent. If you have to get the base version out of it, it's the best solution to go with. As compared to other cloud service providers, the pricing of Sauce Labs is decent."
"Try the free trial and work with a Sauce Labs representative to see what package works best for your application(s)."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Regression Testing Tools solutions are best for your needs.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
5%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 do you like most about Appium?
Appium helps me to do as much as much as I want to.
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 do you like most about Sauce Labs?
It has significantly enhanced our testing accuracy by approximately 50%.
What needs improvement with Sauce Labs?
Sauce Labs can include new technologies like generative AI, which can reduce the human effort in writing test cases. For example, in my current project, we reduced the time it took to complete user...
What is your primary use case for Sauce Labs?
I work as an automation engineer using Selenium WebDriver with Java, and API automation using Rest Assured with Java. I have also worked with Docker integration on AWS. Additionally, I have experie...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nuvizz, Coupa Software, Eventbrite, Evernote
Salesforce.com, Mozilla, Zendesk, Puppet Labs, Twitter, Bank of America, Eventbrite, Bleacher Report, Okta, Intuit, Travelocity, Sharecare, CapitalOne.
Find out what your peers are saying about Appium vs. Sauce Labs and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.