Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

WebdriverIO VS BrowserCat

Compare WebdriverIO VS BrowserCat and see what are their differences

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WebdriverIO logo WebdriverIO

Webdriver module for Node.js. that makes it easier to write Selenium tests

BrowserCat logo BrowserCat

Easy, fast, and reliable browser automation and headless browser APIs. The web is messy, but your code shouldn't be.
  • WebdriverIO Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-19
  • BrowserCat Home Page
    Home Page //
    2023-12-21
  • BrowserCat Metrics Dashboard
    Metrics Dashboard //
    2023-12-21
  • BrowserCat Easy Setup
    Easy Setup //
    2023-12-21

Finally, you can develop browser automation without the pain and the cost of deploying a fleet of headless browsers. Connect to BrowserCat, scale globally, and pay only for what you use. Scrape the web, automate your workflows, test your apps, generate beautiful images and pdfs from HTML, give you AI agent web access, and more.

Get started in minutes. Our forever-free plan gives you 1,000 free requests per month.

BrowserCat

$ Details
freemium $10.0 / Monthly
Platforms
Web REST API Google Chrome Firefox Safari

WebdriverIO features and specs

  • Multi-browser Support
    WebdriverIO provides extensive support for multiple browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, and Safari, making it versatile for cross-browser testing.
  • Rich Plug-in Ecosystem
    The framework has a robust plug-in system that allows users to customize and extend functionalities according to testing needs, enhancing flexibility.
  • Asynchronous Command Handling
    WebdriverIO handles commands asynchronously, which improves performance and allows better management of test execution flow.
  • Integrated Test Runner
    The built-in test runner simplifies the management of test suites, making it easier to manage and execute tests without needing additional tools.
  • Comprehensive Documentation
    WebdriverIO boasts extensive and detailed documentation, which aids developers in efficiently setting up and using the tool.

Possible disadvantages of WebdriverIO

  • Initial Learning Curve
    New users may experience a steep learning curve due to the framework's asynchronous behavior and JavaScript promises.
  • JavaScript Only
    Being JavaScript-centric, it may not be ideal for teams or projects that prefer or require using other programming languages exclusively.
  • Complex Configuration
    Setting up the framework and configuring it properly can be complex and time-consuming, particularly for developers new to WebDriver-based testing.
  • Frequent Updates
    While updates are generally beneficial, the frequent release of updates can lead to compatibility issues and require maintenance time to keep up.

BrowserCat features and specs

No features have been listed yet.

WebdriverIO videos

WebdriverIO Tutorial Series Review | #20

More videos:

  • Review - Test React Apps with WebdriverIO
  • Review - Get Started With WebdriverIO - WebdriverIO Wednesdays

BrowserCat videos

No BrowserCat videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

Add video

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to WebdriverIO and BrowserCat)
Browser Testing
100 100%
0% 0
Automation
0 0%
100% 100
Testing
100 100%
0% 0
Web Scraping
0 0%
100% 100

Questions and Answers

As answered by people managing WebdriverIO and BrowserCat.

Which are the primary technologies used for building your product?

BrowserCat's answer:

BrowserCat is built on robust open source technology that's under active development. The star of the show is Playwright, which is our recommended automation library. It's maintained by Microsoft, it officially supports JS, Python, Java, and .NET, and it's fast becoming the industry standard. BrowserCat also supports Puppeteer and numerous unofficial Playwright ports to Go, Rust, PHP, and Ruby.

What makes your product unique?

BrowserCat's answer:

Unlike other headless browser providers, BrowserCat gives you total control over your browser instances for as long as you need them. Leverage the browsers cache, cookies, and storage for bespoke browser automation jobs that truly differentiate your business from the competition.

What's the story behind your product?

BrowserCat's answer:

In previous corporate and startup gigs, I faced the challenge of developing robust, fast, and scalable browser automation. Most APIs in the space are too limiting for our needs and they were often incredibly slow. On the other hand, hosting your own headless browser fleet was a pain. I founded BrowserCat to make scaling up browser automation as easy, reliable, and affordable as deploying a serverless function.

How would you describe your primary audience?

BrowserCat's answer:

We primarily serve developers, whether the seek to develop unique browser automation jobs or radically improve the performance of their integration tests. However, we frequently work with management, biz ops, and product leaders to solve problems they can't solve any way but through automation.

Why should a person choose your product over its competitors?

BrowserCat's answer:

BrowserCat is built for performance, scalability, stability, and affordability using modern web technologies. Many of our competitors were early to market and compete on entrenchment rather than functionality. Still others are bound by their existing users to continue supporting legacy tech, rather than embrace improved, modern standards. BrowserCat is focused on supporting your for the next ten years, rather than the past ten years.

User comments

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Reviews

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

WebdriverIO Reviews

Top Selenium Alternatives
While WebDriverIO utilizes the Selenium WebDriver for cross-browser testing, it simplifies interaction by providing a more JavaScript-friendly API and a robust plugin system. This makes it more approachable for developers familiar with JavaScript ecosystems compared to the traditional, more language-agnostic Selenium WebDriver.
Source: bugbug.io

BrowserCat Reviews

We have no reviews of BrowserCat yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, WebdriverIO seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 2 times since March 2021. 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.

WebdriverIO mentions (2)

  • Node.js Packages and Resources
    WebdriverIO - Automated testing based on the WebDriver protocol. - Source: dev.to / over 3 years ago
  • Cross Browser Testing With WebDriverIO
    The WebDriverIO project is available on GitHub and the overall statistics speak a lot about the popularity of this JavaScript framework. It has more than 6.7K stars and the project has been forked around 1.9K times. As of writing this blog, the latest version of the WebDriverIO JavaScript framework is 7.7.2. - Source: dev.to / almost 4 years ago

BrowserCat mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of BrowserCat yet. Tracking of BrowserCat recommendations started around Dec 2023.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing WebdriverIO and BrowserCat, you can also consider the following products

Jasmine - Behavior-Driven JavaScript

Microlink - Extract structured data from any website

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.

Apify - Apify is a web scraping and automation platform that can turn any website into an API.

Nightwatch.js - Write efficient and straightforward end-to-end tests in Node.js which run against a Selenium/WebDriver server.

Scrapy - Scrapy | A Fast and Powerful Scraping and Web Crawling Framework