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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

"Testing subscription videos for on-demand software, making them better quality and bug free for our customers."
"The custom capabilities that can be provided to Sauce Labs VMs during automated testing sessions are a valuable option for experimental or niche testing."
"One of the most valuable features is that we do not have to have the cross-platform testing vehicles in-house. Sauce Labs gives us the ability to test across platforms and that really helps give us confidence in our products."
"So far, the stability has proven to be quite good."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to run concurrent automated tests up to a specified value, depending on what we are currently paying for."
"I never faced any issues with the stability."
"Sauce Labs provides us with more combinations to test, so we can keep adding platforms and devices to our network. That's been a very seamless experience. Let's say there's an iOS or a private device we need. Sauce Labs has helped get all those set up when needed."
"Since this is an all-in-one testing site, we are able to take advantage of the browser OS combinations, mobile emulators and simulators, and real mobile devices. This is important to us since we have a variety of users, browsers, OS, etc."
"The most valuable features of Selenium HQ are it is open source and has multiple languages and browser support. It's very useful."
"It supports multiple processes, which is great."
"In general, I would say that the API set is the most valuable feature."
"It supports most of the actions that a user would do on a website."
"It is more stable in comparison to other solutions because they have quite some experience in the market."
"The most valuable feature of Selenium HQ is the ability to create automatic tests that can replicate human behavior."
"Its biggest advantage is that it is very customizable."
"Ability to integrate with every other tool."
 

Cons

"The ability to install profiles on iOS real mobile devices should be included."
"Better and programmatic controls on request/response recordings and sharing with developers."
"Sometimes pasting text while using "text object" does not seem to work, and it slows down testing times quite a bit."
"Speeds up the time it takes to run end-to-end user interface (UI) tests inside their virtual machines (VMs)."
"We encountered minor issues with stability from time to time but Sauce Labs continues to make improvements."
"They should provide a JIRA integration plugin so that we can easily log issues."
"The one issue I have is the 14-day trial that a new user gets for free. I understand the concept of the trial period; however, I think this could be revamped to a free 30-minute run time every few months or after a significant update once the trial period has ended."
"One of the challenging areas for us is the reporting and the matrix. It should be based on roles, but right now it is only available for the admin role. The admin role can really do a lot of stuff, but our infrastructure team, which holds the admin role, is not ready to hand it over to us on the testing team. If Sauce Labs had permissions associated with roles, where this role could do this activity and that role could do that activity, it would be easier for us."
"There are some synchronization issues"
"The initial setup was difficult."
"I have found that at times the tool does not catch the class features of website content correctly. The product's AWS configuration is also hard."
"An improvement to Selenium HQ would be the inclusion of a facility to work on Shadow DOM."
"It would be awesome if there was a standalone implementation of Selenium for non-developer users."
"If they can integrate more recording features, like UFT, it would be helpful for automation, but it's not necessary. They can also add a few more reporting features for advanced reporting."
"In the future, Selenium should be able to automate desktop-based applications, as it is not currently able to handle non-web-based, Windows-based applications."
"Selenium HQ doesn't have any self-healing capabilities."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is reasonable due to the amount of diversity that they provide. However, I feel they might be more flexible to bargain based on their relationship with our organization."
"Compared with other services, Sauce Labs is a bit expensive."
"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."
"Go ahead please. Try it at a smaller scale."
"The number of concurrent VMs that Sauce Labs provides depends on your purchase license level."
"The pricing is definitely on the higher end, and there are other options that are more cost-effective."
"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."
"Try the free trial and work with a Sauce Labs representative to see what package works best for your application(s)."
"Selenium HQ is a free and open-source solution and is supported by Google."
"It is an open-source tool."
"It is all free."
"Selenium HQ is a free solution."
"Selenium is an open-source solution, and It's free."
"The product is open-source and free."
"There is no pricing cost. License is Apache License 2.0."
"Currently, Selenium HQ is free for customers."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
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.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.