WebdriverIO vs Autify

Feature checklists rarely decide anything. What decides it is the pricing metric, who has to write the tests, and which limitation you can live with.

WebdriverIOAutify

Entry price

Free and open source

Open source

Quote on request

Quote only

What drives the bill

The metric that actually scales your invoice.

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

Quote-based annual contracts sized by test runs.

Free tier

Everything, self-hosted

Two-week free trial.

Open source

MIT

Self-hostable

No-code authoring

Languages

JavaScriptTypeScript

CodelessJavaScript

Platforms

WebiOSAndroidDesktop

WebiOSAndroid

Fits teams

StartupScale-up / mid-marketEnterprise

Scale-up / mid-marketEnterprise

Adoption

Widely used

OpenJS Foundation · since 2015

Emerging

Autify, Inc. · since 2016

Strengths

One API for web and native mobile, which is rare and genuinely useful if you ship both.
Vendor-neutral: swap between local, grid and any device cloud by changing config.
Mature plugin ecosystem for reporting, visual testing and accessibility.

Very low barrier to a first working suite — recording plus a managed browser cloud.
Maintenance burden is genuinely reduced by the self-healing model.
Covers web and native mobile from one vendor.

Limitations

Configuration-heavy compared to Playwright; the wdio.conf.js file becomes a project of its own.
Inherits WebDriver's flakiness characteristics when used in WebDriver mode.
Smaller community than Playwright or Cypress, so obscure problems take longer to solve.

Best for

JavaScript teams that need one framework covering both web and native mobile.

Small QA teams that need automation without an engineering hire.

All of these integrate with: Jenkins, GitHub Actions.

Pricing last reviewed August 2026 and is indicative only — confirm on each vendor’s own page.