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Appium vs SmartBear TestComplete 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
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
Mobile Development Platforms (12th)
SmartBear TestComplete
Ranking in Regression Testing Tools
5th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
Functional Testing Tools (8th), Test Automation Tools (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Regression Testing Tools category, the mindshare of Appium is 2.0%, down from 3.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SmartBear TestComplete is 9.2%, down from 9.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Regression Testing Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SmartBear TestComplete9.2%
Appium2.0%
Other88.8%
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.
Prakhar Goel - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Test Lead at Emerson
Used for integration automation, user-based automation, and web automation
The solution's most valuable features are the drag-and-drop feature, keyword-driven approach, and reusability of the scripts. The solution has introduced a new feature that helps us identify objects we cannot normally identify. It gives you a fair idea of objects, resolving the object recognition issue. The solution can be used to perform different tests on different machines.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This is the best test automation tool for any mobile test automation engineer."
"Appium's best feature is that it supports multiple frameworks."
"The solution is stable."
"It has flaws, but is still much better than any other cross-platform mobile automation tool."
"For our company, Appium's similarity with Selenium is important as we use Selenium."
"It can be used with different programming languages."
"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."
"When it comes to mobile automation, I recommend this solution because of its performance, and scalability over the competition."
"For us, the automated test farm of 20 virtual machines for execution, 20 TestComplete licenses and 20 automated testers are doing the job of 100 manual testers."
"The solution's most valuable features are the drag-and-drop feature, keyword-driven approach, and reusability of the scripts."
"It's very helpful that, when you have a recording in one application, in one navigator, you can replay every step in different applications."
"Such anticipation, preparation and workarounds are the way to ‘Doing it right, with TestComplete’."
"TestComplete replaced QTP as the preferred choice of tool for the organization; it is much faster, works better across technologies (especially Flex-based UI), and is better compatible with newer technologies directly out of the box."
"Selenium integration."
"TestComplete is a great product."
"It is a strong automation tool for desktop, browser, and API testing."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"Configuration-wise, there is a lot of room for improvement."
"Installation of this particular tool is tedious, and it gives you a good number of challenges at times."
"The setup and installation were a problem for us at first."
"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."
"One thing which can be really helpful is that there is some kind of a recorder made available rather than scripting everything."
"They should add an in-built framework."
"Technical Support: Not so helpful most of the times. They always fail to produce a work around."
"What is currently missing from this solution is better support for mobile testing."
"This tool is also very expensive compared to the similar tools in the market. Price needs to be affordable."
"It is very hard to read the test log generated by TestComplete Executor if the log file is very big. TestComplete Executor is a small tool for just running the TestComplete test framework (not for developing)."
"The solution needs Mac OS support."
"I can sense there's still a little bit more room for improvement in terms of making the whole testing process easier."
"SmartBear products generally have a weak link when it comes to integration with other test management tools like Inflectra."
"More APIs could be added."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Appium is open source; we can use it for free."
"There is no license for this solution because it is open-source."
"It's completely 100% free, and there are no hidden fees."
"The solution is open-source."
"The solution is open source."
"The price is good for people to be able to make a favorable decision for the value."
"This is an open source solution so it does not cost anything for licensing or otherwise."
"The solution is open source so it is free."
"The solution's pricing is too high."
"The licensing costs are in the range of $1,000 to $3,000."
"The price of SmartBear TestComplete could be less. The main challenge is when it comes to node-locked. They should use a subscription model, such as a monthly-based subscription or, a quarterly-based subscription. Their floating license is very expensive, and this high price should be reduced or provide, at a minimum, a subscription model."
"It comes with a high cost."
"It costs a few hundred per year, but I am not sure. It is not at all expensive as compared to other tools."
"The pricing is a little above average — it could be lower."
"It is approximately $6,000 a year."
"Buy modules on demand. If you have a four-person team and they will each automate tests only 25% of the time, it's better to buy a floating licence and share the tool during the work day."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Construction Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Construction Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
 

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 Business23
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise32
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SmartBear TestComplete?
I am not involved in pricing or licensing; our management team handles these aspects.
What needs improvement with SmartBear TestComplete?
While using SmartBear TestComplete, we are fine with the current capabilities, however, it would be beneficial to improve some performance aspects, especially the image comparison feature. Occasion...
What is your primary use case for SmartBear TestComplete?
We are using SmartBear TestComplete ( /products/smartbear-testcomplete-reviews ) for automation over applications.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nuvizz, Coupa Software, Eventbrite, Evernote
Cisco, J.P. Morgan, Boeing, McAfee, EMC, Intuit, and Thomson Reuters.
Find out what your peers are saying about Appium vs. SmartBear TestComplete and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.