Testim vs Puppeteer

Quote on request

Free and open source

Quote-based beyond the free tier; priced by annual test runs.

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

Free plan with a limited monthly run allowance.

Everything, self-hosted

Established

Tricentis · since 2014

Widely used

Google · since 2017

• Smart locators handle everyday UI churn well.
• The escape hatch to real JavaScript keeps complex cases possible.
• Reusable shared steps keep large recorded suites maintainable.

• Small, fast, and very well documented for Chrome-specific work.
• First-class access to the Chrome DevTools protocol for performance tracing and coverage.
• Excellent at non-test jobs: PDF rendering, screenshots, scraping.

• Test logic lives in the vendor's cloud rather than your repository, which complicates review and branching.
• Run-based pricing punishes running the full suite on every commit.
• Post-acquisition roadmap is bound to the wider Tricentis strategy.

• No test runner, assertions, retries or reporting — you assemble all of it.
• Chrome and Firefox only; no WebKit.
• For E2E testing specifically, Playwright is a strict superset. Choose Puppeteer only when you want a minimal automation library.

Teams with fast-changing UIs that need maintenance to stay low.

Automation jobs that are not tests, or Chrome-only tooling where you want minimal dependencies.