Top Appium Alternatives for Mobile App Testing in 2023

Franklin Clinton
3 min readFeb 24, 2023

Mobile application development is a challenging task that requires precise planning and execution. One of the critical components of mobile app development is testing. Testing helps in detecting errors and ensures that the app runs seamlessly on different devices.

Appium is one of the most popular automation testing tools used by developers worldwide. It is an open-source tool that enables developers to test Android and iOS apps using a single codebase.

Top Appium Alternatives for Mobile App Testing in 2023

However, despite its popularity, Appium might not be the best option for everyone. Some developers might want to explore other options that offer different features, functionalities, or cost-effectiveness.

In this article, we will comprehensively compare six top Appium alternatives that can help developers test their mobile apps more effectively.

Calabash

Calabash is an open-source mobile automation framework that allows developers to write tests using the Ruby language. It supports both Android and iOS platforms and can run on real devices as well as simulators.

Calabash also provides a range of plugins and libraries that make it easy for developers to integrate it with other tools and frameworks.

One of Calabash’s key benefits is that it provides outstanding support for Cucumber, a well-liked behavior-driven development (BDD) tool.

This makes it simple for developers to write tests in a language that everyone participating in the development process can understand.

Selendroid

A testing framework called Selendroid is a free and open-source program. It is made to automate testing for mobile applications for Android and hybrid platforms.

Selendroid is a great option for testing applications on numerous devices because it allows you to run testing on several devices at once.

Developers may easily create tests in Java, Python, or any other language that supports the Webdriver API thanks to Selendroid’s support for the API.

Selendroid provides notable benefits in that it supports a range of mobile gestures, including swiping, tapping, and long-pressing. This feature is particularly useful for developers who want to write tests that imitate the behavior of actual users.

By using Selendroid, developers can easily test how their application responds to different types of gestures, making it easier to ensure that the app functions as intended in real-world scenarios

Test Evolve

Test Evolve is a tool supports testing for both iOS and Android apps. It comes with a number of features that make it simple for developers to build tests in the Swift or Objective-C programming languages and is integrated into Apple’s Xcode development environment.

One of its many significant advantages is the excellent performance testing support that Test Evolve offers. Because it can identify memory leaks, sluggish code, and other performance issues, it makes it straightforward for developers to optimize the speed of their projects.

Robotium

Another well-known automated testing tool made exclusively for Android apps is called Robotium. It offers a variety of APIs that make it simple for developers to interface with Android activities and views, and it enables developers to build tests in the Java language.

Robotium provides outstanding assistance for user interface (UI) testing, which is one of its key benefits. It makes it simple for developers to create tests that mimic user interactions because it can recognize different UI elements including text, buttons, checkboxes, and radio buttons.

EarlGrey

Another solution for automation testing created specifically for iOS apps is called EarlGrey. It is an open-source tool with a variety of features that make it simple for programmers to write tests in the Swift or Objective-C programming languages.

The fact that EarlGrey provides outstanding support for UI testing is one of its many important benefits. The ability to recognize a variety of UI components, including buttons, text fields, and images, makes it simple for developers to create tests that mimic user interactions.

TestComplete

A commercial automation testing tool called TestComplete provides a number of features for testing desktop, online, and mobile applications. It works with real smartphones and supports both the Android and iOS operating systems.

Related: Top Mobile App Testing Tools and Their Features

Conclusion

Choosing an automation framework can be challenging. It depends on the requirements of your project and the skills of your team. Appium is a popular choice, but it is not the only option available.

You can consider alternatives such as Calabash, Selendroid, Test Evolve, Robotium, EarlGrey, or TestComplete to find the best fit for your project.

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Franklin Clinton

Hi, I am Franklin, you can call me Frank. I have been working as a Senior QA Engineer in IT from the last Six years.