Robot Framework vs Cucumber

Free and open source

Free tier available

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

Open source core. SmartBear sells CucumberStudio for collaborative scenario authoring, priced per user on request.

Everything, self-hosted

The Cucumber libraries are open source and free.

Widely used

Robot Framework Foundation · since 2008

Widely used

Smartbear · since 2008

• Non-developers can read and often write the tests, which matters in QA-led organisations.
• Extends far beyond browsers: databases, SSH, serial, network equipment.
• Extremely stable and well-supported in regulated and telecom environments.

• Shared vocabulary between product, QA and engineering when the practice is actually followed.
• Scenarios double as living documentation that stays honest because it executes.
• Available in every major language.

• The keyword abstraction fights you once logic gets complex; you end up writing Python behind the keywords anyway.
• Verbose syntax and whitespace-sensitive files that are awkward to review in a diff.
• Feels dated next to modern JavaScript tooling, and hiring is harder.

• Almost always adopted as a syntax rather than a collaboration practice, at which point it is pure overhead on top of your real tests.
• The step-definition layer is a second codebase to maintain and refactor.
• Gherkin obscures technical detail that developers need when a test fails.

QA-led and regulated organisations where readability by non-programmers is a requirement.

Teams genuinely practising BDD with three-amigos sessions, not teams who just want prettier test names.