Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Karate VS Selenium

Compare Karate VS Selenium and see what are their differences

Karate logo Karate

Web-services testing made simple 🥋

Selenium logo Selenium

Selenium automates browsers. That's it! What you do with that power is entirely up to you. Primarily, it is for automating web applications for testing purposes, but is certainly not limited to just that.
  • Karate Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-11-01
  • Selenium Landing page
    Landing page //
    2024-08-22

Karate features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    Karate is designed to be user-friendly with a simple syntax, making it easy for testers with minimal programming knowledge to write and execute tests efficiently.
  • Integration of API and UI Testing
    Karate offers the ability to perform both API and UI testing within the same framework, providing a unified approach to comprehensive application testing.
  • Built-in Assertions
    Karate has powerful built-in assertions, which allow testers to easily verify API responses and integrate validations without requiring additional libraries.
  • Support for Data-Driven Testing
    Karate supports data-driven testing, enabling testers to execute test cases with varying data sets easily, enhancing coverage and testing efficiency.
  • Parallel Execution
    The framework supports parallel test execution out of the box, which enhances performance by reducing the time taken to run large test suites.

Possible disadvantages of Karate

  • Limited Customization
    While Karate is user-friendly, its syntax and structure can be restrictive when trying to implement complex custom logic or intricate test scenarios.
  • Java Dependency
    Karate is built on Java, which means users must have a Java environment set up, potentially adding complexity for teams not familiar with Java.
  • UI Testing Limitations
    Although Karate supports UI testing, it's not as feature-rich or robust as specialized UI testing frameworks like Selenium.
  • Learning Curve
    There's a learning curve for new users due to its unique syntax and approach, which might be challenging for individuals used to other testing frameworks.
  • Community and Ecosystem
    Karate has a smaller community compared to other established frameworks, which may limit the availability of plugins, extensions, and community support resources.

Selenium features and specs

  • Open Source
    Selenium is an open-source tool, which means it is freely available for anyone to use, modify, and distribute. This makes it a cost-effective choice for companies of all sizes.
  • Cross-Browser Compatibility
    Selenium supports multiple browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. This allows testers to ensure that web applications work seamlessly across different browsers.
  • Cross-Platform Support
    Selenium can run on various operating systems including Windows, macOS, and Linux. This provides flexibility to test on multiple platforms to ensure consistent user experience.
  • Supports Multiple Programming Languages
    Selenium supports multiple programming languages such as Java, C#, Python, and JavaScript. This allows testers to write their scripts in the language they are most comfortable with.
  • Rich Community and Documentation
    Being a widely-used tool, Selenium has extensive community support and a wealth of documentation and tutorials available. This makes it easier for new users to get started and find solutions to problems.
  • Integration with Other Tools
    Selenium integrates well with various testing frameworks and tools like TestNG, JUnit, and Maven, as well as CI/CD tools like Jenkins and Docker. This makes it a versatile and comprehensive automation solution.

Possible disadvantages of Selenium

  • Steep Learning Curve
    Selenium requires knowledge of programming to create and maintain test scripts. For those new to automation or coding, the learning curve can be quite steep.
  • No Built-in Reporting
    Selenium does not come with built-in reporting features. Testers must rely on third-party tools or build custom reporting solutions to generate test reports.
  • Limited Support for Desktop Applications
    Selenium is designed primarily for web application testing and offers limited support for desktop applications. This limits its use in scenarios where desktop application testing is needed.
  • Manual Effort for Maintenance
    Test scripts require regular maintenance to accommodate changes in the web application, such as updates to the UI or changes in element identifiers. This can lead to significant manual effort.
  • Performance Issues
    Selenium can be slower compared to other automation tools, especially when running extensive test suites. This can affect the speed of the overall testing process.
  • Browser Compatibility Issues
    Although Selenium supports multiple browsers, each browser's implementation of WebDriver may have unique quirks and bugs. This occasionally leads to test script compatibility issues across different browsers.

Karate videos

Karate Kid movie review 2010

More videos:

  • Review - Next Karate Kid - Nostalgia Critic

Selenium videos

What is Selenium | Selenium Explained in 2-minutes | Introduction to Selenium | Intellipaat

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Karate and Selenium)
Website Testing
9 9%
91% 91
Automated Testing
4 4%
96% 96
Browser Testing
5 5%
95% 95
API Tools
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

Share your experience with using Karate and Selenium. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Karate and Selenium

Karate Reviews

Postman Alternatives for API Testing and Monitoring
Karate Labs is a tool known for its versatility in test automation, particularly for APIs, web services, and UI testing. It stands out for its simplicity in writing tests, even for non-programmers, due to its Gherkin-based DSL. For API testing, Karate Labs allows users to test both SOAP and REST APIs. It can send requests, receive responses, and validate the response data.
15 BEST SoapUI Alternatives (2022 Update)
Karate is a new API testing framework base on cucumber library. Karate DSL allows testers to write meaningful tests for web service using a domain-specific language.
Source: www.guru99.com

Selenium Reviews

Top Selenium Alternatives
Nightwatch.js simplifies the setup and use of Selenium WebDriver, providing an abstraction layer that is easier to work with for JavaScript developers. While it offers the broad compatibility and standardization of Selenium WebDriver, it aims to improve the development experience with its simplified syntax and support for the Page Object pattern, making it a middle ground...
Source: bugbug.io
Top 5 Selenium Alternatives for Less Maintenance
And that’s why code-free test automation is important. Implementing codeless Selenium alternatives can address the challenges posed by traditional Selenium testing. They help testers with various skill sets to contribute to the testing process, enhancing collaboration and accelerating the testing lifecycle. For an in-depth discussion on the significance of codeless Selenium,...
Best Automation Testing Tools (Free and Paid) | July 2022
Automation testing is the process of testing the software using an automation tool to find the defects. In this process, executing the test scripts and generating the results are performed automatically by automation tools. Some most popular tools to do automation testing are HP QTP/UFT, Selenium WebDriver, etc.,
20 BEST Selenium Alternatives in 2021
Selenium is an open-source automated testing tool. It can perform functional, regression, load testing on web applications across different browsers and platforms. Selenium is one of the finest tools, but it does have some drawbacks.
Source: www.guru99.com
Top 10 Best Selenium Alternatives You Should Try
Selenium is a convenient and portable software testing tool specifically used for testing web applications. It acts as an API (Application Program Interface) for browser automation. Selenium is the widely used free and open-source tool used for automation testing of web applications through various browsers and platforms.

Social recommendations and mentions

Karate might be a bit more popular than Selenium. We know about 11 links to it since March 2021 and only 8 links to Selenium. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Karate mentions (11)

  • Level up your Karate Testing with Spring Boot DI
    For a few years I've used Cucumber for higher level testing, and only more recently started using Karate. While Cucumber is a great tool, I think Karate really shines in reducing the boilerplate that comes along with step definitions and making it easy to write meaningful tests quickly, especially when it comes to API testing. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • Cucumber Maintainer out of Job and future of the project is uncertain
    This is why we need better tools which will give benefits for the added complexity. If you need to create both the feature files AND the code, it's just complexity with little benefits. But frameworks like https://github.com/karatelabs/karate are hiding this complexity and remove the code layer entirely. Which, in my view, this is where you need to be in 2023, particularly for API testing. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 years ago
  • Lama2: Plain-Text Powered REST API Client for Teams
    Congrats on the launch ! I'm the lead dev of [Karate](https://github.com/karatelabs/karate) and the IDE and traditional solutions fall short. I hope Karate's syntax passes your "memory friendly" test :) We get regular feedback is that it is easy to read and even non-programmers can pick it up. One thing I feel we do really well is chaining of HTTP requests. And we have plugins for... - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • Hurl, run and test HTTP requests with plain text
    I recently found a BDD style tool that has native HTTP comprehension, which seems like it hits a similar area in the testing concept space: https://github.com/karatelabs/karate. - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • Hurl 1.8.0, text based integration tests for REST APIs and web sites
    I'm doing something similar but taking the approach of karate framework making it a kitchen sink of e2e testing tools. Love to see another rust based solution! I might open source mine at some point, I've implemented curl + webdriver, I will expand to support other things in my stack like desktop automation. Source: over 2 years ago
View more

Selenium mentions (8)

  • How to write tests in Django for JavaScript fetch
    You won't be able to test the javascript function itself from within python, but you can exercise the front-end code using something like cypress (https://cypress.io) or the older but still respectable selenium (https://selenium.dev). Source: about 2 years ago
  • Having Issues with selenium
    In addition, .find_element_by_class_name is deprecated since selenium 4.3.0 and the replacement is .find_element(By.CLASS_NAME, "class"). Check selenium's site for more info. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Issues with Selenium 4.8.0
    This is the code again after checking selenium's official site :. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Having Issues with selenium
    I also tried the following code seen on the selenium.dev website. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Document Object Model Specification
    The following functions are defined within the Selenium project, at revision 1721e627e3b5ab90a06e82df1b088a33a8d11c20. - Source: dev.to / about 3 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Karate and Selenium, you can also consider the following products

Robot framework - Robot Framework is a generic test automation framework for acceptance testing and acceptance...

Cypress.io - Slow, difficult and unreliable testing for anything that runs in a browser. Install Cypress in seconds and take the pain out of front-end testing.

Insomnia REST - Design, debug, test, and mock APIs locally, on Git, or cloud. Build better APIs collaboratively for the most popular protocols with a dev‑friendly UI, built-in automation, and an extensible plugin ecosystem.

Katalon - Built on the top of Selenium and Appium, Katalon Studio is a free and powerful automated testing tool for web testing, mobile testing, and API testing.

BrowserStack - BrowserStack is a software testing platform for developers to comprehensively test websites and mobile applications for quality.

soapUI - SoapUI Pro is one of the most prominent API testing platforms around, allowing developers to quickly prototype the functions of their apps and get them to market with little hassle.