BrowserStack Live vs. Automate: Which One Do You Need?

Testing your web apps across different browsers and devices is crucial. BrowserStack offers two powerful tools: BrowserStack Automate and BrowserStack Live. They both help with testing, but they do different things. This article clarifies the differences between BrowserStack Automate and BrowserStack Live, helping you choose the best fit for your testing needs. Whether you're a seasoned pro or just starting out, we'll guide you through their features and benefits for seamless cross-browser testing with BrowserStack.

BrowserStack Automate

BrowserStack Automate is a robust tool designed to simplify and enhance the efficiency of automated testing, allowing developers and QA teams to scale their tests and deliver features faster.

What is BrowserStack Automate?

BrowserStack Automate is a cloud-based web and mobile app testing platform that allows developers to run automated tests across various browsers, operating systems, and devices. This eliminates the need for maintaining a complex in-house testing infrastructure, saving time and resources. It ensures your product works correctly for a wide audience by offering access to real devices and browsers, not just simulations. BrowserStack provides comprehensive test coverage with over 3,000 browsers and 20,000 real iOS and Android devices.

Benefits of Using BrowserStack Automate

One of the key advantages of BrowserStack Automate is its ability to streamline the testing process, helping companies release products faster. Teams can run tests concurrently across multiple environments by leveraging its cloud infrastructure, significantly reducing testing time. This parallel testing capability is a major benefit for agile development and continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) workflows. For teams looking to integrate robust automated testing into their development pipeline, a service like MuukTest can provide expert QA and seamless integration with CI/CD, further enhancing testing efficiency and coverage. MuukTest is known for achieving complete test coverage within 90 days.

Use Cases for BrowserStack Automate

BrowserStack Automate caters to a wide range of testing needs, including:

• Regression Testing: Ensure that new code changes haven’t introduced bugs into existing functionalities.
• Cross-Browser Testing: Verify that your web application renders and functions correctly across different browsers and versions.
• Mobile App Testing: Test your mobile apps on a wide array of real devices, ensuring compatibility and performance.
• Visual Testing: Detect and fix visual inconsistencies across different browsers and devices.

These capabilities make BrowserStack Automate a valuable tool for any development team striving to deliver high-quality web and mobile applications.

You can write your automated test cases and trigger them from your machine. These tests execute on your highly reliable cloud infrastructure. You can then view and debug results on the BrowserStack Automate dashboard.

Thousands of tests can be run in parallel, reducing test execution time from hours to minutes. BrowserStack Automate manages the test infrastructure for you so that you can focus on scaling the tests and shipping the features faster.

It has over a hundred browser and OS combinations, which you can pick from the list mentioned here.

Features of BrowserStack Automate:

BrowserStack Automate offers a multitude of features that empower teams to conduct extensive and efficient testing:

1. Parallel Testing: One of the standout features of Automate is its ability to run thousands of tests in parallel. This capability dramatically reduces test execution time from hours to minutes, enabling faster development cycles.
2. Cross-Browser Testing: With over 100 browser-OS combinations available, Automate allows you to test your application across a wide range of real browsers and mobile devices. This extensive coverage ensures that your web application is compatible with various user environments.
3. Integration with CI/CD: Seamlessly integrate BrowserStack Automate into your continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines. This integration automates testing as part of your development workflow, providing rapid feedback on code changes.
4. Automated Screenshot Comparison: Detect visual regressions easily by leveraging automated screenshot comparisons. This feature ensures that your application’s visual elements remain consistent across different browsers and platforms.
5. Real User Conditions: Test your application under real-world conditions by simulating various network connections, GPS locations, and more. This capability helps you identify performance bottlenecks and optimize user experiences.
6. Test Analytics: It offers detailed test analytics, helping you identify issues and bottlenecks in your test suite. You can access test reports, logs, and screenshots to pinpoint problems quickly.
   
   

Getting Started with BrowserStack Automate

Test execution on desktop browsers:

Let’s walk through the steps to set up and run tests using BrowserStack Automate.

In this example, we will be using Playwright with NodeJS as Playwright is one of the leading testing automation tools in the market right now. We will be running the tests using NodeJS SDK on BrowserStack’s Playwright Grid of 100+ browser-OS combinations.

1. Create Your Account:
Begin by creating a BrowserStack account and obtain your username and access key from BrowserStack’s profile page.

2. Install Node.js:

Ensure that you have Node.js version 14 or higher installed on your machine. You can download it from the official Node.js website.

3. Clone the Test Project:

BrowserStack Automate Integrations

BrowserStack Automate’s integration capabilities are a major strength. It works well with popular testing frameworks like Selenium, Playwright, Cypress, and Puppeteer, giving developers flexibility and choice. This means you can incorporate BrowserStack Automate into your existing testing process without needing to rebuild it.

Beyond testing frameworks, BrowserStack Automate also integrates with CI/CD tools like Jenkins, Jira, and GitHub Actions. This is key for automating testing within your development pipeline. Trigger automated tests with each code change, get immediate feedback, and catch bugs early. This speeds up development and improves the quality of your web application. Other CI/CD platforms like CircleCI, Travis CI, and Bitrise also offer solid integrations with BrowserStack Automate. This wide range of integrations makes BrowserStack Automate adaptable to different development environments and workflows.

If you’re looking for a comprehensive and efficient approach to test automation, consider MuukTest’s AI-powered solutions. We specialize in achieving complete test coverage within 90 days, significantly improving test efficiency and coverage.

BrowserStack Automate Pricing

BrowserStack Automate offers a variety of pricing plans to suit different needs and budgets. Starting at $25/month, BrowserStack is competitively priced, often lower than similar services, according to SaaSworthy. This makes it an attractive option for individuals and smaller teams.

You have the flexibility to purchase plans for Live, Automate, or Screenshots, and you can choose between monthly or annual billing. The annual billing cycle offers a 10% discount, providing additional savings. More details on payment options are available on the BrowserStack Support page.

For teams, BrowserStack offers options like complimentary access to the Team Live plan for a trial period (three months for up to five users). This allows teams to experience collaborative testing with access to over 3500 real desktop and mobile browser combinations. You can explore these team plans on the BrowserStack Pricing page.

If you're still unsure, BrowserStack frequently offers free trials, allowing potential users to explore the platform before committing to a paid plan. This trial period can be invaluable in determining if BrowserStack Automate meets your testing needs. Visit their website or contact their sales team for the latest information on free trial availability.

Clone the test project from here which contains example test files for demonstration (originally forked from BrowserStack official repo).

This is a simple project with 3 test files:
a. test_pl_table_topper.js : opens this link and find the team that is on top of the table.
b. test_mobile_fpl_deadline.js : same as above but for mobile device testing.
c. test_fpl_deadline.js that opens the webpage , checks the deadline date, and alerts the user if today is deadline day.

4.  Install Dependencies:

Navigate to the project directory in your terminal and run the command npm i to install the required dependencies.

What is BrowserStack Live?

BrowserStack Live provides instant access to real mobile and desktop browsers for interactive testing. This lets you test your website or web app on different browsers and operating systems without local installations. It’s like having a virtual device lab at your fingertips.

Think of it as renting a device in the cloud. You select the operating system, browser version, and even screen resolution, and BrowserStack spins up a virtual machine. This allows quick testing on different configurations without managing physical devices or virtual machines yourself.

BrowserStack Live is particularly useful for tasks like exploratory testing, where you manually interact with your web application to uncover unexpected issues. It’s also great for quick checks on different browsers to ensure compatibility and a consistent user experience.

If you need to test on a specific browser and operating system combination quickly, BrowserStack Live is a convenient and efficient solution. It’s especially helpful for developers and QA professionals who need to verify how their web applications render and function across various environments.

5. Configure browserstack.yml:

Edit the browserstack.yml file, replacing [Add your username here] and [Add your access key here] with the credentials obtained in step 1.
Configure the test environments to specify the browsers and operating systems you want to target. Then configure the test environments to specify the browsers and operating systems you want to target.

In this case, we have set up the tests to run on two operating systems (Windows 11 and OS X) and three browsers (Chrome, Safari, and Firefox).

6. Run Tests:

Execute the tests using the command npm run pl-test. The tests will run on BrowserStack’s infrastructure, with logs showing the progress and a link to view the test report on the BrowserStack platform.

On your console logs, you can see both the tests running on three different browsers parallelly using three workers on BrowserStack infrastructure. 

7. View Test Results:

The test report displayed on the dashboard provides details on the number of tests executed, passed, and failed, along with information about the test framework, browsers, and operating systems used. You can also access additional information such as test video recordings, network logs, console logs, and device details.

At the end of the logs, it provides the URL to view the test report on the BrowserStack platform. Open this URL on a browser to see the full test report.

The test report is now displayed on the dashboard with the number of tests executed, passed and failed details, test framework used, browser, OS used for each test, etc.

You can clearly see my tests were run across Firefox, Safari, and Chrome between Windows and Mac operating systems. That is how easy it is to scale your tests on BrowserStack Automate. All the hassle of setting up a test infrastructure is taken away from you and you get to spend time on building the tests rather than worrying about the infrastructure.

Clicking on any test shows the full details of the test run including the test video recording, network logs, console logs, device information, etc.

Another really good feature is that you can share your test results using a public link with which anyone can view the interactive test results while keeping your private information hidden.

Here is the link to my test execution if you would like to check it out.

Test execution on mobile browsers

Now let’s execute one of the above tests (b) test_mobile_fpl_deadline.js on an Android mobile device on the browser stack platform.
At the time of writing this article, BrowserStack only supports Android testing for Playwright.

1. Configure Device and Browser combination

You can set the Android Browser-OS combination in the playwright.config.js as shown below:

I have set deviceName: “Samsung Galaxy S22” for this test as I wish to test it on a Galaxy S23 device. Similarly, we can test for other devices by setting this value to “Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra”, “Google Pixel 7 Pro”, “OnePlus 9”, etc.

2. Configure fixture.js

In the fixture.js file, add your username and access key under [Add your username here] and [Add your access key here] fields.
The patchMobileCaps function within the fixture.js file facilitates dynamic patching of the capabilities according to the project name.

3. Run Tests:

Now you can run the test using the command npm run mobile-test

BrowserStack will spin up a Samsung Galaxy S22 device on your account and run the test. Just like the previous test, you can see the test results and other details on the dashboard.

Choosing Between BrowserStack Live and Automate

Deciding between BrowserStack Live and Automate depends on your testing needs. Live is ideal for interactive testing and quick checks, while Automate excels at automated regression testing and continuous integration.

Think of BrowserStack Live as your on-demand virtual testing lab. You get instant access to real browsers and devices, letting you manually test your website or web app across different environments. It's perfect for exploratory testing, usability checks, or verifying quick fixes. If you need to reproduce a bug a user reported on a specific browser version, BrowserStack Live is your go-to tool. You can even test on real mobile devices, mimicking real-world user conditions.

BrowserStack Automate, on the other hand, focuses on automation and efficiency. It's designed for running large-scale automated tests, making it a key component of continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) workflows. With Automate, you can run thousands of tests simultaneously across various browser and OS combinations, dramatically reducing testing time. This is especially useful for regression testing, ensuring that new code changes haven't introduced bugs into existing functionality. If you're looking to scale your testing efforts and accelerate your development cycles, Automate is the better choice. For a deeper dive into test automation, check out MuukTest's test automation services.

In short, if you need quick, manual testing across different browsers and devices, choose BrowserStack Live. If you need to automate your testing process and integrate it with your CI/CD pipeline, choose BrowserStack Automate. Many teams find value in using both tools together, leveraging Live for ad-hoc testing and Automate for comprehensive, automated testing.

Troubleshooting Common Browser Issues

BrowserStack helps identify and resolve common browser issues such as crashes, slow performance, and unexpected behavior. By testing across a wide range of browsers and devices, you can ensure a consistent user experience.

Common Issues and Solutions

Browser Crashes

Experiencing frequent browser crashes? A few simple steps can often resolve the issue. First, try restarting your browser. If that doesn't work, clearing your cache and cookies can sometimes help. Outdated browsers can also be a source of instability, so updating to the latest version is always a good idea. If crashes persist, consider checking if your computer's operating system needs an update, as that can sometimes impact browser stability. For more in-depth information, BrowserStack's guide offers additional troubleshooting tips.

Slow Performance

Sluggish browser performance can be frustrating. Before diving into browser-specific fixes, start by checking your internet connection. A slow or unstable connection can significantly impact browsing speed. If your connection is fine, the issue might lie with the website itself. Optimizing website resources, such as images and scripts, can improve loading times. If you're still experiencing slow performance, try resetting your browser settings to their default configuration. BrowserStack's guide also suggests ensuring your browser is up-to-date, as newer versions often include performance enhancements.

Pop-up Issues

Pop-ups can range from mildly annoying to downright disruptive. If you're encountering excessive or unwanted pop-ups, your first step should be to check your browser's pop-up blocker settings. Sometimes, browser extensions can also cause unexpected pop-ups, so temporarily disabling extensions can help pinpoint the culprit. In some cases, excessive pop-ups can indicate malware, so running a virus scan is a good precautionary measure. BrowserStack recommends installing a reputable ad-blocker for additional pop-up control.

Clicking on any test shows the full details of the test run including the test video recording, network logs, console logs, device information, etc.

Here is the link to my test execution if you would like to check it out.

Conclusion

BrowserStack Automate offers a comprehensive solution for automated web application testing. Beyond the features covered in this article, it provides advanced capabilities like testing Chrome Extensions, file uploads, and integration with tools like Lighthouse. Moreover, Automate seamlessly integrates with popular CI/CD platforms like GitHub Actions and Jenkins, enabling you to automate and streamline your testing process. By harnessing the power of BrowserStack Automate, you can enhance the quality of your web applications and accelerate their delivery to users.

BrowserStack Live

BrowserStack Live is designed to provide developers and QA professionals with the ability to conduct real-time, manual testing on a wide range of browsers and devices. This tool empowers you to interact with your web applications remotely, mimicking user behaviors and scenarios, and ensures that your software meets the highest standards of quality and user experience.

Features of BrowserStack Live

1. Live Interactive Testing: BrowserStack Live allows you to access real browsers and devices remotely. With this feature, you can manually explore and interact with your web application as if you were using it on your local machine.

2. Instant Bug Reproduction: Debugging and issue resolution become more efficient with BrowserStack Live. You can easily reproduce reported issues on different browsers and devices, allowing for swift identification and resolution of bugs.

3. Responsive Testing: Test the responsiveness of your web application effortlessly. Resize browser windows, switch between devices, different browser versions, and emulate various screen resolutions to ensure your application adapts seamlessly to different screen sizes.

4. Developer Collaboration: Collaboration between developers and QA professionals is simplified through BrowserStack Live. You can share live test sessions, making it easier to communicate, troubleshoot, and address issues in real-time.

5. Geolocation Testing: Verify location-based features by simulating GPS coordinates. Ensure that your application behaves correctly in different regions, providing consistent functionality for users worldwide.
   
   

Getting Started with BrowserStack Live:

Let’s walk through the steps to start using BrowserStack Live for your testing needs.

1. Create Your Account:
You can begin by creating a BrowserStack account to gain access to the BrowserStack Live tool.
Access the tool. Enter the URL of the web app you would like to test and click on Start Test button. We will use the same Premier League app URL we did for BrowserStack Automate.

2. Select Your Testing Environment:

You can choose from a wide array of real browsers and devices, including different versions and operating systems, to create your ideal testing environment.

You can run your tests across new and old versions of Edge, Safari, Chrome, IE and Firefox on Windows and macOS.
This helps in the seamless reproduction of bugs your users might have reported on specific devices with specific browser versions.

Windows options:

Mac options:

You can also run your tests across a range of real Android and iOS devices.

Android options:

iOS options:

3. Begin Manual Testing:

After you pick the OS and browser combination, BrowserStack will dedicate a live device for you and spin up the browser you selected. You can then navigate to different URLs and begin your testing.

Windows:

MacOS:

Android:

iOS:

4. Debug and Optimize:

BrowserStack Live has powerful embedded debugging tools to identify and debug issues instantly. Using these tools you can reproduce bugs, test different scenarios, and optimize your application’s performance and user experience.

You can use the live browser’s developer tools to view console logs or network requests.

You can also throttle network requests to see how your web app behaves on different network speeds.

When you find a bug, you can share the details of it with your team along with custom annotations and session details, including OS, resolution, browser, tested URL, and more as attachments via different apps like Jira, GitHub, Slack, etc.

5. Collaborate and Share Results:

Collaborate seamlessly with your team by sharing live test sessions. BrowserStack Live also allows you to share test results and sessions with stakeholders, ensuring transparency and efficient communication. You can do this by inviting team members to your test sessions.

6. Geo Location tagging:

BrowserStack Live ensures global compatibility. You might have a pricing page on your app that shows different pricing in different currencies for different regions. How do you test that efficiently? Using a VPN? Well, you do not need one when you have Live. You can simulate geolocations and test your app in various regions.

7. Upload/Download files to/from live devices:

You can seamlessly transfer your files to and from live devices with BrowserStack Live’s file upload feature. This allows testers and developers to directly transfer and utilize their local assets, such as files, scripts, or test data, on real devices in the testing environment. This feature streamlines the testing process by enabling users to work with their preferred resources without the need for additional setup or manual transfers. It promotes efficiency, accuracy, and the ability to conduct comprehensive testing with ease.

Conclusion

BrowserStack Live is a game-changer in the world of real-time, interactive testing. With its extensive browser and device coverage, instant bug reproduction, and seamless collaboration features, it empowers development and QA teams to ensure the highest quality and user experience for their web applications. Embrace the power of BrowserStack Live to bring your testing efforts to the next level, delivering reliable and optimized web applications in today’s competitive digital landscape.

Key Takeaways

In summary, BrowserStack Automate and BrowserStack Live are two distinct offerings from BrowserStack, each catering to specific testing needs.

• BrowserStack Automate is ideal for teams that require automated testing, CI/CD integration, and parallel test execution. It’s a powerful solution for regression testing, test automation, and maintaining application quality at scale.
• BrowserStack Live is perfect for manual testing, debugging, and real-time issue resolution. It is an excellent choice for situations where testers need to interact with the application directly and collaboratively.

Ultimately, the choice between the two depends on your project’s requirements. Many organizations use both BrowserStack Automate and BrowserStack Live in tandem to cover all aspects of their web application testing needs, ensuring a seamless user experience across various platforms.

Related Articles

• BrowserStack: Automate vs Live - Which One Do You Need?
• Ultimate Guide to Cross-Browser Testing in 2024
• A Practical Guide to See My Website in Different Browsers
• Your Complete Guide to Cross-Platform Testing
• Web App Testing: A Practical Guide (2024)

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I use BrowserStack Automate and BrowserStack Live together? Absolutely! Many teams find it beneficial to use both tools. BrowserStack Live is great for quick, interactive testing and bug reproduction, while Automate is perfect for large-scale automated testing within a CI/CD pipeline. Using them together gives you comprehensive test coverage.

How does BrowserStack Automate handle testing on different mobile devices? BrowserStack Automate provides access to a wide range of real iOS and Android devices. You can specify the desired device and OS combination in your test configuration, and Automate will run your tests on those specific devices in the cloud. This eliminates the need for maintaining your own mobile device lab.

What are the key differences between BrowserStack Automate and BrowserStack Live in terms of testing approach? BrowserStack Automate is designed for automated testing, meaning you write scripts to execute tests without manual intervention. BrowserStack Live, on the other hand, is for interactive, manual testing. You directly interact with the web application on different browsers and devices through BrowserStack's platform.

What are the main benefits of using BrowserStack Automate for regression testing? BrowserStack Automate is particularly well-suited for regression testing because it allows you to quickly and easily rerun your existing test suite against new code changes. Its parallel testing capabilities significantly reduce the time it takes to run these tests, allowing you to get faster feedback and catch regressions early in the development cycle.

How does BrowserStack Live help with troubleshooting browser-specific issues? BrowserStack Live gives you instant access to a variety of different browsers and browser versions, allowing you to easily reproduce and investigate browser-specific problems. You can use the built-in developer tools within the live browser session to debug issues and verify fixes. This makes it much easier to identify and resolve compatibility problems across different browsers.