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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
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
Mobile Development Platforms (9th)
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 March 2026, in the Regression Testing Tools category, the mindshare of Appium is 2.4%, down from 4.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SmartBear TestComplete is 11.0%, up from 9.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Regression Testing Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SmartBear TestComplete11.0%
Appium2.4%
Other86.6%
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

"The library is extensive so the driver interacts with most functions or actions on mobile devices."
"It can be used with different programming languages."
"The solution is stable."
"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."
"What I like about Appium right now is that it's like Cypress in the sense that............. to test the components in the way I want them to be tested."
"The solution helps with test automation. We focus mostly on Java."
"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."
"It's an open-source solution with a very large community and available documentation."
"TestComplete is simple, it's a very easy-to-use tool."
"The reporting is ready to use and doesn't require any setup."
"The solution's most valuable features are the drag-and-drop feature, keyword-driven approach, and reusability of the scripts."
"In TestComplete, I saw a conformed package of a tool that kept everybody in consistency. The team was able to regenerate further tests without having to manipulate more code because the record feature is great."
"SmartBear TestComplete performs some self-healing and has a feature called OCR (optical character recognition)."
"The solution helps improve the stability of our product. It also decreases the work of our manual quality assurance engineers."
"Customer service and technical support responsiveness are high. Everyone is very professional."
"The solution is mainly stable."
 

Cons

"An application developed on the Unity platform, such as a gaming application, objects are moving in that case. Interacting with those elements is still lacking in Appium. Appium doesn't have the internal library to play with the Unity platform. That is a huge lack right now."
"It breaks down."
"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."
"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."
"The initial setup is straightforward if you have previous experience with the solution, but it can be complicated for a novice user."
"If it had more facility for configuration it would be a spectacular solution."
"We previously worked with native applications, and there weren't any good mobile app testing tools. We started working with React Native, which works well with Appium, but it would be good to see better integration; the way elements are displayed can be messy. React Native is very popular nowadays, so it's essential to have that compatibility."
"Appium can improve when the case fails, there should be a feature where you can generate the report from Appium. Once you're on a test case, automatically the screenshot should be captured which would avoid manual intervention. These features would be beneficial to migrate to Appium."
"The solution needs Mac OS support. Right now, the solution has only been developed to accommodate Windows OS."
"TestComplete gives support to do requests to a SOAP web service but has no support to do HTTP requests on Restful services."
"The pricing is the constraint."
"Right now, when you buy the solution, you need to pay for one solution. You receive one set up and you install it and it's just in that one machine. It would be ideal if they could offer one subscription where you can connect to different machines with a group subscription."
"There could be API interfaces with this tool."
"I didn't use it very heavily. One issue that I found was that there wasn't a quick way or a button to move Visual Basic scripts to TestComplete. We have a lot of such scripts in our organization, and it would be very useful to have some option to easily move these scripts. It is currently possible to convert these scripts to TestComplete, but it is not easy. I have to write some code, but everything is not available immediately."
"One notable drawback is the absence of native integration with Git."
"SmartBear products generally have a weak link when it comes to integration with other test management tools like Inflectra."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"As far as I know, Appium is a free solution. It's not for commercial use."
"The solution is open-source."
"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."
"I'm unsure if there's any cost associated with Appium. I got the free package which includes the server GUI application and the inspector application, and it was free to download, and that's all I need to get my work done. I'm not aware of any additional costs associated with the tool."
"Appium is open source; we can use it for free."
"It's open source, so it's completely free."
"The option we chose was around $2,000 USD."
"This is a pay-per-use service that is not expensive, and cost-efficient if you have a small team."
"Our ROI is about $10,000 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."
"TestComplete now have come up with three modules (Web, Desktop & Mobile), so based on the type of product for automation, it is adequate to purchase the required module."
"The pricing is pretty reasonable."
"The solution's licensing cost has increased because it has moved to some new SLM-based licenses."
"SmartBear TestComplete is an expensive tool."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
5%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
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 Business22
Midsize Enterprise20
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 do you like most about SmartBear TestComplete?
TestComplete has strong reporting capabilities. The reports they generate are really good.
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...
 

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: March 2026.
884,797 professionals have used our research since 2012.