WebdriverIO vs QA Wolf

Free and open source

Quote on request

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

Annual service contracts. Substantially cheaper than hiring an in-house automation team, substantially more expensive than a tool licence.

Everything, self-hosted

Widely used

OpenJS Foundation · since 2015

Emerging

QA Wolf · since 2019

• 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.

• Removes the maintenance burden entirely — no flaky-test triage on your side.
• You own the Playwright code, so leaving is possible.
• Coverage arrives in weeks rather than quarters.

• 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.

• It is headcount, not software — the cost profile is completely different from a licence.
• External team needs deep product context to test meaningfully.
• Fast-moving products can outpace the feedback loop with an external author.

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

Funded startups that need coverage now and have no QA hire in the plan.