Maestro vs Detox

Free tier available

Free and open source

Free CLI; Maestro Cloud charges for hosted device execution, priced by run volume.

Free and open source. You pay in engineering time and CI minutes.

The CLI is open source and free for local and self-hosted CI use.

Everything, self-hosted

Widely used

mobile.dev · since 2022

Widely used

Wix · since 2017

• Dramatically faster to a first working test than Appium — minutes versus days.
• Built-in tolerance for asynchronous UI removes most flake without explicit waits.
• Readable YAML that a product manager can follow.

• Automatic synchronisation with the RN bridge eliminates most timing flake.
• Same JavaScript and Jest tooling the app team already uses.
• Fast execution because there is no external driver round trip.

• YAML limits complex conditional logic and data-driven scenarios.
• Younger project with a smaller ecosystem than Appium.
• Fewer integrations with enterprise device clouds.

• React Native only — useless for native or Flutter apps.
• Requires building a special test binary, which complicates the pipeline.
• Grey-box coupling means an RN upgrade can break your test setup.

Mobile teams that want working coverage quickly without an automation specialist.

React Native teams that want low-flake E2E tests in their existing toolchain.