Why write tests in Appium, as opposed to using cloud hosted testing tools such as Sauce Labs or Browser Stack

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Hi there, I’m fairly new to the world of mobile automation testing but as I gradually learn more about it, there is one burning question that I have. I have seen a lot of articles about being able to write automated tests for mobile devices using appium…so my mind thinks “great, I’ll add this to the (ever growing!) list to learn about”.

However, I am then stopped in my tracks when I think to myself that it’s already possible for me to test on mobile devices using a cloud based testing tool such as Sauce Labs or Browser Stack. With such a tool I can configure it so that it runs tests against whichever device I want, specific platforms etc.

Playing devils advocate I was just after some advice as to why we’d need to write tests in Appium when we could use the above tools? That said, if we do need both, would they complement each other in some way?

Any help, as always, much appreciated

Andy

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Interesting question, I didn’t try the cloud version yet. But in my opinions you write your tests in appium (or other) then using cloud devices you can set a parallel run multidevices (virtual) using same tests you already prepared.

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Hi! I have experience of mobile app project. We did it by using own device farm and Appium. If I would start now new project and app would be React Native based, I would try to drive development and basic tests toward Expo or Ionic frameworks. Then you can make smoke and basic UI tests by using browser and e.g. Cypress, Playwright or Robot Framework with Browser extension (Playwright based). Then these real device tests could be implemented for Appium with cloud services (Sauce Labs or Browser Stack) or own device farm.