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Appium vs Selenium HQ comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on May 21, 2025

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
Ranking in Regression Testing Tools
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
Mobile Development Platforms (7th)
Selenium HQ
Ranking in Regression Testing Tools
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
113
Ranking in other categories
Functional Testing Tools (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Regression Testing Tools category, the mindshare of Appium is 2.6%, down from 4.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Selenium HQ is 5.5%, up from 5.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Regression Testing Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Selenium HQ5.5%
Appium2.6%
Other91.9%
Regression Testing Tools
 

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.
Sujata Sujata Ghadage - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Manager consultant - Digital assurance Services at adrosonic
Automation in testing processes sees improvement with multi-browser support and easier website interactions
Selenium HQ could improve by including a robust reporting framework, eliminating the need for external frameworks. The tool could simplify object identification, enabling users to generate XPaths without requiring detailed DOM understanding. Additionally, an automatic update mechanism for Selenium HQ would be beneficial, eliminating the need for manual downloads and updates of browser drivers when new versions are released.

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 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."
"The most valuable feature of Appium is it supports iOS and AOS and is open-source."
"The library is extensive so the driver interacts with most functions or actions on mobile devices."
"The solution helps with test automation. We focus mostly on Java."
"We do not need to pay for the solution. It’s free."
"The most valuable features of Appium are the in-built functionality, which we can use in our code. For example, move back, move front, navigate one page before, and navigate one page ahead. You can do this by using the in-built functions from Appium."
"Obviously because of automation, it reduces manual testing efforts."
"It has great documentation and excellent community support."
"The most valuable features of Selenium HQ are that it is free and allows using any programming language."
"The main characteristic that is useful is that the tool is completely free."
"It is stable. I have never encountered any concerning situations with Selenium HQ."
"I am impressed with the product's ability to catch content from website."
"Our platform runs into several thousand screens and a few thousand test cases, something which would typically take months to test manually. As of today, the entire process takes a little over two days to run."
"The most valuable aspect of Selenium is that it gives you the flexibility to customize or write your own code, your own features, etc. It's not restricted by licensing."
"We found the initial setup to be straightforward."
"Selenium is easy to use, with a straightforward setup and many reusable features."
 

Cons

"Configuration-wise, there is a lot of room for improvement."
"Image recognition could be improved. We have some images in our mobile applications. It should be able to run from the cloud, so we can automate the catcher."
"We need some bug fixes for nested elements."
"Appium has problems with automated validations following iOS updates, causing us to have to validate manually."
"Stability is an area that needs some improvement."
"The installation part of Appium is somewhat clumsy, requiring numerous dependencies and configurations."
"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."
"If it had more facility for configuration it would be a spectacular solution."
"I have found that at times the tool does not catch the class features of website content correctly. The product's AWS configuration is also hard."
"The solution can be improved by providing better reporting logs."
"There should be standardized frameworks to build automation."
"Sometimes we face challenges with Selenium HQ. There are third party tools that we use, for example for reading the images, that are not easy to plug in. The third party add-ons are difficult to get good configuration and do not have good support. I would like to see better integration with other products."
"Selenium HQ could have better interaction with SAP products."
"The initial setup was difficult."
"I would like to see Selenium HQ support legacy platforms."
"One key area for improvement is the documentation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is open-source."
"Appium is free and open-source."
"As far as I know, Appium is a free solution. It's not for commercial use."
"The solution is open source so it is free."
"Appium is open source; we can use it for free."
"We found out that we could explore features of the solution for 30 days trial. We can switch to a permanent license later if we want."
"The solution is open source."
"The pricing of Appium is fine."
"The setup cost is open source or free."
"The solution is open-source, so it is 100% free with no hidden charges."
"This product is open source and free. That was a huge deciding factor for us getting into it."
"It is an open-source product, it is free for anyone to use."
"It's open-source, so it's free."
"It's an open-source tool that you can work with at any time without any cost."
"Selenium is an open-source product. It is free."
"This is an open-source product that can be used free of charge."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Retailer
5%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

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 Business41
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise51
 

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.
How do I choose between Selenium HQ and Eggplant Digital Automation Intelligence?
Selenium HQ’s biggest advantage is that it is customizable. Its other most valuable feature is that the driver interface is really helpful and user-friendly; Selenium HQ makes it easy to navigate t...
What do you like most about Selenium HQ?
Selenium's open-source nature is a key advantage. Its extensive support for diverse web technologies.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Selenium HQ?
I will give an eight for my satisfaction with the pricing and licensing costs of Selenium HQ.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
SeleniumHQ
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nuvizz, Coupa Software, Eventbrite, Evernote
BrowserStack, Sauce Labs, experitest, Tricentis GmbH, SmartBear Software
Find out what your peers are saying about Appium vs. Selenium HQ and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.