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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 (7th)
SmartBear TestComplete
Ranking in Regression Testing Tools
4th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
Functional Testing Tools (7th), Test Automation Tools (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Regression Testing Tools category, the mindshare of Appium is 3.7%, down from 5.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SmartBear TestComplete is 9.8%, up from 9.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Regression Testing Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Luis Gerardo Meneses Hernandez - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows for direct interaction with an application's DOM but complex configuration
What I like about Appium right now is that it's like Cypress in the sense that I can get to the new DOM of the application and select the components and create the functions to test the components in the way I want them to be tested. That's why I like it right now.
Prakhar Goel - PeerSpot reviewer
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

"Appium has easy interaction with mobile."
"Appium's wide support of programming languages is valuable."
"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."
"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."
"We do not need to pay for the solution. It’s free."
"Appium helps me to do as much as much as I want to."
"It can be used with different programming languages."
"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."
"Customer service and technical support responsiveness are high. Everyone is very professional."
"Selenium integration."
"The most valuable features are the desktop and mobile modules."
"When compared to other tools, it is very simple."
"You can record your actions and play them back later."
"The product's initial setup phase was easy."
"TestComplete fits almost perfectly with a large amount of stacks, such as Delphi, C#, Java and web applications."
"The solution is mainly stable."
 

Cons

"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."
"Support-wise, it could be better."
"The tool needs to add a dependency manager."
"They should add an in-built framework."
"We need some bug fixes for nested elements."
"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 user interface needs improvement because there are issues when setting up environment variables."
"If it had more facility for configuration it would be a spectacular solution."
"Headless testing would be a big improvement."
"This solution could be improved by making it easier to visualize where there is a failure without having to look at it in detail."
"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."
"Increased performance with less memory and CPU usage."
"The solution needs Mac OS support. Right now, the solution has only been developed to accommodate Windows OS."
"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)."
"TestComplete gives support to do requests to a SOAP web service but has no support to do HTTP requests on Restful services."
"The licensing costs are a little bit high and should be reduced."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is open source."
"Appium is free and open-source."
"The pricing of Appium is fine."
"It's open source, so it's completely free."
"Appian is open-source, which is not licensed."
"It's completely 100% free, and there are no hidden fees."
"Appium is open source; we can use it for free."
"The solution is free."
"This is a pay-per-use service that is not expensive, and cost-efficient if you have a small team."
"Overall, for us, the cost of the TestComplete platform and the three extra modules is around $8,000."
"The licensing costs are in the range of $1,000 to $3,000."
"The pricing is a little above average — it could be lower."
"The pricing is pretty reasonable."
"The license price for a physical machine is cheap, and for virtual machine, it is very expensive."
"It costs a few hundred per year, but I am not sure. It is not at all expensive as compared to other tools."
"Our ROI is about $10,000 a year."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
5%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
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 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: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.