Top 10 UI Test Automation Tools You Should Know

While developing an application, developers have to look after many things, including functionality, usability, easiness, and application responsiveness. And after the development, it’s the job of testers to ensure the app works as expected. Thus, they need to test every aspect of the application, including the user interface.

Whether desktop, mobile, or cloud, every application needs a user-friendly interface to attract and engage users. But, testing the UI of applications is one of the challenging tasks, as there are many platforms that need to be tested, which can be very time-consuming if done manually. Therefore, testers need a UI test automation tool to automate the tests across all the platforms.

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Why is UI Testing Important?

The first thing that users interact with when accessing an application is the UI. In other words, the UI acts as the first impression of an application. UI plays a vital role in retaining your visitors. If your web app offers an immersive experience to the users, it’s most likely to rank up in the search engines. Thus, it is highly crucial to test the UI of web applications before diving into their functionality and other factors.

UI Testing is the process of analyzing how your web app interacts with the user when accessed over varied platforms. It includes testing the web app’s usability, finding errors in the UI, and examining the app’s look and feel. But, testing the UI manually on varied platforms could be very time-consuming. Therefore, it is recommended to automate the UI testing of web apps. There are many advantages of automating the UI testing of web apps, such as:

Helps in finding regression errors
Offer consistency while reducing the margin of errors
Require fewer resources with quick execution of test cases
Helps in testing the UI across multiple platforms at one time

To automate UI testing of web apps, you need a reliable and compatible testing tool that can easily integrate with your existing frameworks and execute UI tests.

10 Best UI Test Automation Tools

Here, we have enlisted the top 10 UI Test automation tools useful in UI testing and other testing scenarios of web applications.

1.Selenium

Whenever we talk about automation testing tools, Selenium always stays at the top of the list. It is one of the most popular open-source automation testing tools that are extensively in demand. In fact, it has become the industry standard due to its flexibility with third-party IDEs and some popular programming languages. Selenium can automate UI testing on almost every operating system and browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, MS Edge, etc.

Another thing that makes Selenium popular amongst testers for UI testing is that it is not a single tool. Selenium is a testing suite that consists of four different utilities – Selenium IDE, Selenium RC, Selenium WebDriver, and Selenium Grid.

Support multiple programming languages like Java, Python, C#, Ruby, PHP, JavaScript, etc.
Provides record and playback feature with the Selenium IDE environment
Easy compatibility with third-party IDEs like Eclipse, Visual Studio, etc.
Allow generating complicated and advanced automated test scripts with Selenium WebDriver
Easy integration with management tools like JIRA, Jenkins, VS Team Services, etc.
Being open-source, it offers many libraries, flavors, and whole spin-off projects to help you automate almost any technology

However, Selenium requires more programming knowledge as compared to other UI testing tools in the market. The reason being it is supported by communities and not a company.

2.LambdaTest Selenium Grid

LambdaTest is another successful test automation tool that is ideal for UI testing of web apps. It is one of the most affordable testing tools available online that gives you access to multiple features and functionalities. It even allows you to test your web apps across various mobile devices with its newly launched tool – LT Browser. Moreover, the easy integration of LambdaTest with other bug logging and project management tools makes it a better option for testers.

Test the UI of your web app across more than 2000 browsers, operating systems, and devices
Integrated with debugging tools that allow you to find bugs in your web app UI easily
Offers screen recording and playback feature to help you analyze the entire test scenario
Screenshot testing of web pages across various browsers, OS, and devices
Ideal for testing locally hosted web pages or web application to avoid deployment bugs
Integrated with Selenium Grid that makes it easy to execute automation tests
Suitable for cross browser testing of web apps across various platforms
Comes with Chrome extension and WordPress plugin for quick UI testing of web pages

LambdaTest is considered a better option than Selenium because it is integrated with Selenium Grid and provides 24/7 support.

3.UFT/QTP

United Functional Testing, earlier known as Quick Test Professional, is a regression and functional testing tool ideal for UI testing of web apps. It is acquired by Micro Focus, which is a well-known name in the IT industry. Earlier this year, a new version of UFT was released by Micro Focus, which offers new functionalities to streamline the test processes, maintain quality, and improve test efficiencies.

A popular and widely used test automation tool for desktop, mobile, web, and RPA applications
Uses Visual Basic (VB) script edition as a scripting language to register test procedures and operate several objects in testing the apps
Offers easy installation with an all-in-one package, including IDE, Test Runner, Reporting, Integration, etc.
Easy to learn without any programming skills due to the keyword view functionality
Comes with error handling mechanism and unique smart object recognition

UFT might be an excellent UI testing tool, but its cost is much higher as compared to other paid tools in the market. Also, it has limited browser, and browser versions support for UI testing.

4.Test Complete

Offered by SmartBear, Test Complete is a simple and easy to use UI test automation tool. It allows testing teams to build, execute, and maintain UI testing for all types of web applications. TestComplete provides quick UI testing of apps while ensuring top quality software. In April 2020, the latest version of the tool was released with new enhancements and abilities.

Require minimum or no programming skills for creating test cases
Comes with a friendly GUI that provides direct buttons to execute the test cases
Support scripting with VB, Python, C#, Ruby, Angular, Delphi, and PHP programming languages
Offers UI object recognition abilities that help in identifying and updating UI object quickly
Ideal for object-driven, keyword-driven, and data-driven testing

TestComplete is not only a costly option, but it is also limited to test web apps on Windows only. So, if you need to test the UI of apps on other OS, it is not an ideal option for you.

5.CodedUI

Supported by Microsoft, CodedUI is a robust UI test automation framework that is better than other tools in many aspects. For instance, it is ideal for multiple applications like desktop apps, SOAP, IE Browsers, Windows phone apps, etc. Moreover, it offers easy integration with ALM, VS Team Services for bug management, continuous testing, and agile planning. However, CodedUI is not considered a great utility for large projects.

Support remote execution of test cases with parallel testing
Quick integration with TFS, MTM, and VS Team Services for all ALM processes
Allow recording exploratory tests that can be edited and associated with backlog items and bugs
Provides extensive features with the IDE environment, such as Test explorer, CodedUI Maps, Recorder, UI Spy, record and playback, Test Runner, etc.

CodedUI is an excellent utility for beginners who want to perform UI tests on Windows apps. But, it comes with limited scripting languages as compared to Selenium.

6.Test Project

If you are looking for an all-in-one test automation platform, then Test Project is an ideal choice for you. It gives you the flexibility to test web, mobile, and APIs. Another good thing about Test Project is that it is built on basic standards of open-source test automation tools like Selenium and Appium. According to Gartner, Test Project is the top free automation tool available in the market.

It is the world’s first community-powered automation testing platform that is easy to install and use without any coding skills
Support multiple platforms, including Android, Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and WebServices
Offers cloud-based record and playback features with a developer SDK to extend the capabilities of the tool
Offers a team-first approach for software teams to automate their test cases on the web, iOS, and android apps
Easy integration with multiple project management tools like Slack, Jenkins, Sauce labs, etc.

Test Project offers an immersive experience for automation testing while reducing the intricacy of managing and installing drivers for every browser and platform.

7.Squish

Squish is known as the expert UI test automation tool that helps test the present’s apps. It is a cross-platform tool that comes with multiple benefits and functionalities. It is competent in testing multiple apps based on GUI technologies like Mac, Windows, Android, iOS, Java, Qt, etc.

Considered as one of the best tools in terms of GUI test automation for Agile projects
Ideal for all types of UI automation testing, including desktop, mobile, embedded, and web GUI testing
Included with property-based object identification to identify specific objects in the app UI
Offers record and playback feature for tests written in Perl, JavaScript, Python, TCL, or Ruby

Squish could be an ideal choice for individuals interested in testing the UI of their web applications across a wide range of OS and devices.

8.AutonomIQ

AutonomIQ is an AI-based test automation tool that offers a three-step process for UI automation testing. It provides a comprehensive approach towards UI testing by discovering the app interface via AI and then enables you to build test cases from that discovery.

An ideal tool for testers who need a hybrid amid code and codeless solution for UI testing
Allow running tests across multiple devices, browsers, and environments
Reduces the testing time between smart platforms and incumbent automation tools
Offers string ML, NLP, and AI algorithms for quick UI testing of various applications
Provides an alternative approach to traditional BDD by using NLP

The major drawback of AutonomIQ is that it cannot be directly integrated with your existing framework. Also, you cannot import test scripts to the tool.

9.Xamarin Test Studio

If you’re looking for a practical tool for Mobile UI test automation, then Xamarin Test Studio is your best bet. Xamarin is a cross-platform development technology that enables developers to build iOS, Android, and Windows applications. The Test Studio tool offered by it provides some extensive features as compared to other testing tools.

Offers an integrated framework to present your layer code for each platform with a single data layer that works across all platforms
Offers continuous integration with mobile applications for requirement planning, deployments, automated builds, and continuous delivery
Allow performing functional testing and regression testing of mobile apps
The IDE environment of Xamarin allows you to record and edit scripts like Emulator and Inspector to run tests on locally hosted apps

Despite all these benefits and functionalities, Xamarin is not popular amongst the developer community because it is relatively new and rebranded as Visual Studio App Center after Microsoft acquired it.

10.Ranorex Studio

Ranorex Studio has been in the market for more than a decade now. It is a commercial Windows GUI automated testing tool that provides comprehensive UI testing on desktop, mobile, and web apps. Recently, the latest version of Ranorex was launched in the market with enhanced Jira and TestRail reporting.

An ideal tool for beginners who have little or no knowledge of coding, as it comes with an easy-and-go interface and beneficial wizards
Offers easy integration with Selenium Grid for distributed testing and parallel test implementation
Comes with sophisticated abilities for UI element detection, editing, and management
Quick integration with project management tools like Jenkins, TestRail, Git, Travis CI, Jira, and more

All over, Ranorex is an excellent tool for UI test automation. But, if we look at the subscription plans, it is pretty costly compared to other test automation tools.

All-in-All

UI testing of applications has become a standard for enterprises because it ensures that users will have a seamless experience accessing their applications. Considering the number of devices, OS, and browsers, testing the UI across all the platforms manually could be very time consuming and costly. Thus, testers need an automated UI testing tool to ease the entire UI testing process and provide desired results. This article mentions the top 10 UI test automation tools that can fulfill your UI testing needs.