Cypress and Selenium are automation testing tools used for functional testing of web applications. Selenium has been a widely-used tool for years, whereas Cypress is a recently introduced tool in the test community.

But since Cypress has a significant growth within a short period of time, it’s natural for testers to compare the two before choosing the ideal tool for test automation.

Cypress is a purely JavaScript-based front end testing tool built for the modern web. It aims to address the pain points developers or QA engineers face while testing an application. Using cypress, QAs or developers can create Unit tests, Integration tests and End to End tests. Following the agile methodology, front end developers have started creating their own test cases. JavaScript is a widely used language among the front end developers. The fact that Cypress is purely based on JavaScript indicates how this tool is designed to meet the needs of front end developers in particular. So, one needs to be proficient in JavaScript before getting started with cypress.

Selenium is a popular test automation tool that automates web-browsers. This open-source tool has been a leading choice for testers for over a decade now. Developers and QAs have the flexibility to choose the programming language of their choice. Selenium developers have developed language bindings for multiple languages like Ruby, Python, Java, etc

Main differences between cypress and selenium

One of the main differences between cypress and selenium is that Selenium executes in a process outside of the browser or device we are testing. Cypress executes in the browser and in the same run loop as the device under test. Cypress executes the vast majority of its commands inside the browser, so there is no network lag. Cypress will automatically wait for your application to reach this state before moving on. You are completely insulated from fussing with manual waits or retries. Cypress has eliminated the main problem with Selenium by executing in the same run loop as the device.

1.Browsers supported

Selenium : Chrome, IE, Safari, Edge, Firefox, Opera

Cypress : Chrome, Edge, Firefox(beta), Electron

2.Languages Supported

Selenium : Supports all popular languages like Java, Python, Ruby, C#, Php, etc.

Cypress : JavaScript Only

3.Frameworks Supported

Selenium : Supports multiple frameworks based on specific programming languages. (For e.g: JUnit for Java, Cucumber for JavaScript, etc.)

Cypress : Supports only Mocha JS

4.Setup Complexity

Selenium : Setup is a bit challenging as it requires downloading browser-specific drivers and setting up the test environment

Cypress : Setup is simple. No dependencies or additional downloads required

5.Documentation & Community Support

Selenium : Well established documentation and firm community support from users across the globe

Cypress : Very intuitive documentation along with rapidly growing community

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