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Appium vs Perfecto comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
Mobile Development Platforms (9th), Regression Testing Tools (6th)
Perfecto
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Performance Testing Tools (15th), Functional Testing Tools (16th), Mobile App Testing Tools (6th), Test Automation Tools (20th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Appium and Perfecto aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Appium is designed for Mobile Development Platforms and holds a mindshare of 2.7%, down 4.4% compared to last year.
Perfecto, on the other hand, focuses on Mobile App Testing Tools, holds 6.6% mindshare, up 5.0% since last year.
Mobile Development Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Appium2.7%
OutSystems9.7%
Temenos Quantum8.9%
Other78.7%
Mobile Development Platforms
Mobile App Testing Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Perfecto6.6%
Tricentis Tosca23.2%
OpenText Functional Testing16.6%
Other53.6%
Mobile App 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.
Glenford John - PeerSpot reviewer
Product Manager, Device Integration at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Saves us $2.6 million per year, provides more efficient testing, and helps us strengthen relationships with vendors
The automation piece is the most valuable feature. Every time we had a new version of either OS or an application, we found that being able to automate the testing across different devices is very valuable. Perfecto is great at executing cross-platform testing. From a carrier perspective, it's all mobile, but we also have web applications. We used to be able to test on Symbian, Windows OS, Android, and iOS. Today, we can go on a big screen and test on Chrome, Firefox, Explorer, and other browsers. My team leverages Perfecto's reporting and analytics. When we start stress testing an application, we can look at all the reporting that comes from that, and we can tell at what part of the day the app is performing better. Our analytics are very important to us. Presentations are important, so it's good to have reports with graphs that show the time of day or how the app was performing for months at a time. We use those reports to screen capture, go with the data, and to show to upper management. We can do a comparison of one version performance to another version of the application or device performance. We utilize Perfecto's cloud-based lab to test across devices, browsers, and OSs. We are a carrier, so we have our devices with different OS versions of devices. Right now, it's mostly just Apple and Androids. Back in the day, they had many different versions of the OS, but the only other thing on top of that is web-based browsers. We don't test Linux, which is an operating system of Windows. We don't use Perfecto's cloud. We use our own devices because we test on only our organization's devices. Unless we do some kind of competitive analysis, it's not really a test; it's just a comparison to see how other solutions compare to ours. The range of open-source technologies that Perfecto supports is great. I have a team of contractors that report to me and do all the testing for our organization, and that team turns over every couple of years. We mostly utilize the in-house automation that is available for anyone who isn't a great programmer. They have support for all these other drivers, and they have something for non-programmers who want to automate their work, which is amazing.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Obviously because of automation, it reduces manual testing efforts."
"It has great documentation and excellent community support."
"It's one of the most stable solutions for mobile automation."
"When it comes to mobile automation, I recommend this solution because of its performance, and scalability over the competition."
"Currently, most people use Appium as automation software, and I haven't found any other tool that's more powerful than Appium."
"Appium is a great tool, and I recommend it."
"The interface is user-friendly, which is beneficial for users, even for those who are new to it."
"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're working in Agile and we need results ASAP. The fact that the lab provides same-day access to new devices is extremely important to us."
"The automation piece is the most valuable feature. Every time we had a new version of either OS or an application, we found that being able to automate the testing across different devices is very valuable."
"We are able to offer a quality product that has been tested fully, which improves our customer satisfaction. That is a good thing. It has also reduced our IT infrastructure cost. We don't have to spend a lot on setting up infrastructure, which becomes redundant or obsolete very soon. It helps in offsetting that cost."
"It creates a faster production cycle and is quick to market. Things get deployed earlier because the testing happens on time. We can do a lot of panelization, so a lot of test phases can happen in a panel. People don't have to wait for a device to come to them. They can access multiple devices at the same time and do testing at the same time."
"The most valuable aspect of the solution is that it covers all types of devices on the market allowing you to test different versions of an operating system."
"One of the good things about Perfecto is the scalability that it provides."
"Customer Service: It's been 100%. Technical Support: It's been 100%."
"Perfecto's device lab has helped us to scale our testing and it has made testing easier for us."
 

Cons

"Sometimes, the Appium server won't connect with the mobile application because of some socket issues, so network connectivity between applications and the Appium server could be improved."
"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 last time I used it, whenever I selected and clicked on an element, Appium was very slow."
"We haven't been able to fully leverage Appium for multiple reasons. I think number one is just that the tests take a long time to run. We have had some issues around just the results themselves and how predictable they are, but those are not issues with Appium directly."
"Appium can improve when the case fails, there should be a feature where you can generate the report from Appium."
"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."
"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 product was a bit difficult to install. It wasn’t easy. We had issues."
"On the analytics side, Perfecto is in need of improvement."
"In iOS, it needs improvements with some limitations."
"The flakiness, or the accuracy, of the test execution can be improved. Also, the responsiveness of their cloud lab could be improved as well."
"Its performance should be improved. Anything to speed up the user interface would be a great help. We've had a lot of pain with their migration from a product UI that was based on Adobe Flash to the new product that is based on HTML5. Migrations like that seemed to be very painful and not a real smooth process. We're still sort of recovering from that migration from old technology to new, and we haven't got all the functionality ported over that we used to have on the old UI."
"It is slow compared to physical device testing. The interactive speed could be improved."
"We don't use Perforce's BlazeMeter with Perfecto. From my perspective, it's not really relevant."
"The monitoring features, in particular network traffic monitoring, could be improved."
"When using devices on the cloud, it lags quite a bit at times. I know that these are real devices that are being projected on our laptop screens and monitors, but if the speed could be improved, that would be good."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's open source, so it's completely free."
"Appian is open-source, which is not licensed."
"This is an open source solution so it does not cost anything for licensing or otherwise."
"As far as I know, Appium is a free solution. It's not for commercial use."
"It's completely 100% free, and there are no hidden fees."
"The solution is open source."
"The solution is free."
"There is no license for this solution because it is open-source."
"It's definitely on the higher end of prices for this type of service."
"Perfecto is about 30-40% cheaper than Device Anywhere. That was a big reason why we switched. Perfecto also solves some of the issues that we had with Device Anywhere. We have grown by 100% since we started to use Perfecto, and now we have devices roaming. When we look at the competition, we would still stick with Perfecto."
"Pricing is an area where Perfecto can do a little better. When we obtain additional licenses, we enter into negotiations with them."
"Perfecto has definitely saved us on the costs and efforts of having to maintain our own virtual test environment. We lost about 20 devices in the past to maintenance and audit. That was a massive loss for us, as a company, because we were giving devices to someone, but don't know whether we would get it back or not. Having those virtual labs, we don't need to worry about these kinds of things. We are easily saving $5,000 to $10,000 a month on device costing."
"Although Perfecto is a good product for us to use, it is a bit expensive. It takes management a bit of work to find the appropriate funding for us to keep Perfecto. I imagine there could be some way to make it more accessible."
"Pricing-wise, it is fine. It is not as expensive as what we used to have in the past from HP, IBM, and others. It is decently priced."
"Perfecto's price is excellent compared to other products with similar features. It was the lowest of the three we evaluated. We also established a partnership with Perfecto, so they provide discounts when we sell Perfecto projects and licenses to our customers."
"This is an expensive solution compared to others, by 30% to 40%."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

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 Business1
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise23
 

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.
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Perfecto Mobile, Perfecto Web
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nuvizz, Coupa Software, Eventbrite, Evernote
Virgin Media, Paychex, Rabobank, R+V, Discover
Find out what your peers are saying about Mendix, OutSystems, Salesforce and others in Mobile Development Platforms. Updated: March 2026.
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