Appium vs Selenium

As technology continues to evolve, organizations must increase efficiency, enhance productivity, and minimize costs. As a result, automating test cycles has become mandatory for testing teams. Automated testing helps teams release websites and apps faster. Test automation frameworks like Selenium and Appium have become extremely popular for this reason. Let's understand the difference: Appium vs Selenium

What is Selenium?

Selenium is an open-source test automation framework that enables QAs to automate web-application testing.

The Selenium test suite has four components:

1. Selenium IDE
2. Selenium RC
3. Selenium WebDriver
4. Selenium Grid

QAs can use Selenium to automate web-applications to test them for cross-browser compatibility on both desktop and mobile devices.

Benefits of Selenium

1. Open Source and very simple to start with
2. Provides compatibility with multiple operating systems like Windows, Linux, Mac
3. Gives flexibility to write scripts in a programming language of user’s choice ( Java, Ruby, Python, etc.)
4. Supports browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Safari and more
5. Enables parallel testing
6. Offers robust documentation support

What is Appium?

Appium is the most popular open-source framework for app automation testing. It allows QAs to automate tests for popular mobile platforms like Android, iOS, and Windows. Appium uses the mobile JSON wire protocol (an extension of Selenium JSON wire protocol) for native, mobile web and hybrid applications. The Appium server is scripted in Node.js and is compatible with client libraries like Java, Python, Ruby, PHP, etc.

Benefits of Appium

• Free and open-source
• Enables automated testing of native, hybrid and mobile web applications,
• Support for multiple programming languages (Ruby, Java, Python, etc.)
• Enables cross-platform (Android & iOS) testing on real devices, emulators, and simulators

Coverage

Appium can automate tests for both mobile (android, ios) and desktop applications.

Selenium can only automate Web application testing on multiple browsers. It cannot automate desktop applications

Purpose Of Appium

1. Used to automate tests for native, hybrid(.ipa and .apk) and mobile web applications.
2. Appium can automate tests for both mobile (android, ios) and desktop applications.

Purpose Of Selenium

1. Used to make web-app testing easier by automating browser actions using WebDriver.
2. Selenium can only automate Web application testing on multiple browsers. It cannot automate desktop applications

The best way to understand these frameworks is to actually use them. Run tests on both Selenium and Appium to gain real, usable insight. Start running tests a cloud selenium grid meant for automated selenium testing. Find a service that provides automated app testing via Appium on a real device cloud of Android and iOS devices.