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Sauce Labs vs Selenium HQ comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

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

Sauce Labs
Ranking in Functional Testing Tools
12th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
113
Ranking in other categories
Test Automation Tools (15th)
Selenium HQ
Ranking in Functional Testing Tools
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
110
Ranking in other categories
Regression Testing Tools (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Functional Testing Tools category, the mindshare of Sauce Labs is 5.9%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Selenium HQ is 3.7%, down from 5.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Functional Testing Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Joel Alonzo - PeerSpot reviewer
Metrics about testing across the company are easily accessible, and it's easy to get teams up and running
Multi-domain SSO is a big concern for us right now, especially as we've been merged into a larger company. I suddenly have teams coming from 20 different domains, and because the main master Sauce Labs account is locked down to one SSO domain, there are teams that can't run a test right now. I've heard they're working on a solution and they've been very communicative with us about it. A solution to that would help us a lot. The other issue is that when you're behind a corporate proxy and inside a corporate network, it's a nightmare in general. And the problem that we've come up against over and over again is that a lot of our network staff don't want to open up giant CIDR blocks to internal traffic. Opening it up to one endpoint which is Sauce Labs, through a little API is perfectly fine. That's one IP address and it's no big deal. But for their virtual machines they have one jump box and that jump box contains an entire CIDR block that changes each time the tunnel starts up. In other words, if every call went into one IP and that got bounced back to a load balancer or net gateway, that would help a lot too. When I go to the network team and say, "Hey, we're using a product, a piece of software, and I need an entire CIDR block opened," the first and almost eternal response to that will be "absolutely not." Getting things set up and running is always going to be a bit of a struggle within any corporate environment. Most of that is not Sauce Labs' fault, but the things I just mentioned are things they could do to help deal with that struggle.
Anil Kumar Shrestha - PeerSpot reviewer
An open-source solution that integrates with every programming language and library
What I like best about it is that it can automate everything on the front end with the help of other frameworks. The community worldwide provides support for any issues. Plus, it’s open-source, which is a big advantage. The solution integrates with every programming language and library and is very easy to use. It has a simple syntax, and the documentation on the website makes it straightforward to learn and implement.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Sauce Connect gave us ability to test an application that was hosted locally."
"The most critical thing is that this software aligns with our Agile and DevOps way of doing things. It integrates with kickoff scripts through DevOps."
"Our machines are mostly Windows. Being able to test with Safari, on a Mac, and other types of browser pieces without having to manage all the infrastructure is the biggest feature that our team enjoys."
"Live device testing. As we all know, It's really hard and challenging to find/purchase many real devices to test because it will be costly and not all the team can be able to purchase all of the devices out there. We used to have a lot of real devices under our labs. However, it is really time-consuming to maintain those devices and make sure they are up to date with the testing requirements."
"The insights section provides a great overall state of the automation suite and can identify trends relatively quickly. If we see a dip in our passing rate over time, we can look at what changed when the test started failing to find the root cause rather than doing a quick fix to find that the test fails a short time later."
"It helped to integrate our performance testing and UAT, which helped to deliver a bug free software for our customers."
"I have found the live test section with Sauce Labs to be extremely valuable. When you can't quite figure out why a test is failing, you can go to the live test results section within their tool and launch your test (specifying a given OS/browser, or device) manually and step through the test to see the issue more clearly, usually opening up the developer's tool console and watching the network calls and console (within Chrome) to usually find the underlying issue."
"APPIUM for mobile testing has improved our organization by allowing us to test our website on more devices and browsers than we currently possess."
"We can run multiple projects at the same time and we can design both types of framework, including data-driven or hybrid. We have got a lot of flexibility here."
"The most valuable features of Selenium HQ are the automation of all UI tests, its open-source, reliability, and is supported by Google."
"Has a good Workday application that enables us to handle some of the custom controls."
"Language support - since it supports Java and other programming languages it is easy to integrate with other systems."
"I believe Selenium HQ to be the best solution in the market for automating web applications"
"The most valuable feature of Selenium HQ is the ability to create automatic tests that can replicate human behavior."
"Selenium HQ's most valuable feature is picking up and entering values from web pages."
"The stability and performance are good."
 

Cons

"It should provide more examples of script code."
"Lacks the ability to start multiple tests simultaneously."
"The Jenkins Sauce OnDemand plugin could have more options available to tap into more of the custom capabilities Sauce Labs actually supports."
"Better and programmatic controls on request/response recordings and sharing with developers."
"Unable to segregate reports for tests that are currently being developed, and might not be returning useful results."
"Speeds up the time it takes to run end-to-end user interface (UI) tests inside their virtual machines (VMs)."
"Running tests in the SauceCloud can take longer than running in a local environment."
"User account management needs an overhauls, allowing for user groups rather than just a hierarchy structure."
"Selenium HQ doesn't have any self-healing capabilities."
"There should be standardized frameworks to build automation."
"I would like to see Selenium HQ support legacy platforms."
"There is a need for an auto-healing feature that can address script failures due to changes in the front end."
"It would be very great if Selenium would provide some framework examples so newcomers could get started more quickly."
"I continuously see failures in threads when it is running in parallel."
"We can only use Selenium HQ for desktop applications which would be helpful. We are only able to do online based applications."
"It does require a programming skill set. I would like the product not to require a heavy programming skill set and be more user-friendly for someone without a programming background."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"​Now that we have an enterprise license, we no longer have to worry about minutes each month!​"
"Trial the product and see if it suits your needs."
"We have an enterprise account; it has worked great for our needs."
"Their pricing is incredibly competitive."
"It could be less like pay-per-use with a lower rate."
"With respect to pricing, they did a bundled discount because we went with Sauce Labs for both mobile and browser. They were very competitive on pricing and provided a bundle discount for us as a larger customer."
"Cost-wise, it's decent. If you have to get the base version out of it, it's the best solution to go with. As compared to other cloud service providers, the pricing of Sauce Labs is decent."
"We pay for a specific number of VMs."
"Selenium is an open-source solution, and It's free."
"I have been using the open-source version."
"Selenium is an open-source product. It is free."
"We are using Selenium open-source, so there is no need to purchase anything."
"There is no pricing cost. License is Apache License 2.0."
"It is an open-source tool."
"The solution is open-source, so it is 100% free with no hidden charges."
"Selenium is a free tool."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
15%
Retailer
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Sauce Labs?
It has significantly enhanced our testing accuracy by approximately 50%.
What needs improvement with Sauce Labs?
Sauce Labs can include new technologies like generative AI, which can reduce the human effort in writing test cases. For example, in my current project, we reduced the time it took to complete user...
What is your primary use case for Sauce Labs?
I work as an automation engineer using Selenium WebDriver with Java, and API automation using Rest Assured with Java. I have also worked with Docker integration on AWS. Additionally, I have experie...
How do I choose between Selenium HQ and Eggplant Digital Automation Intelligence?
Selenium HQ’s biggest advantage is that it is customizable. Its other most valuable feature is that the driver interface is really helpful and user-friendly; Selenium HQ makes it easy to navigate t...
What do you like most about Selenium HQ?
Selenium's open-source nature is a key advantage. Its extensive support for diverse web technologies.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Selenium HQ?
Selenium is easy to install and mostly free, so there's no need for a license. This lack of costs makes it an attractive option.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
SeleniumHQ
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Salesforce.com, Mozilla, Zendesk, Puppet Labs, Twitter, Bank of America, Eventbrite, Bleacher Report, Okta, Intuit, Travelocity, Sharecare, CapitalOne.
BrowserStack, Sauce Labs, experitest, Tricentis GmbH, SmartBear Software
Find out what your peers are saying about Sauce Labs vs. Selenium HQ and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.
845,564 professionals have used our research since 2012.