List and Comparison of the Best Functional Testing Tools:
Here, in this article, we have listed the best functional testing tools that can be used to fulfill your functional testing needs.
You can explore the best tool based on your project requirements. Almost every high-level company is working on automation in today’s world. Just being a manual tester will affect one’s career for sure. You need to know something called automation to boost your skill and get shortlisted for good companies.
It’s now the right time to know more about the need for Functional Testing tools.
But which tools we should opt for is really a confusing one. The market is full of a number of automation tools for test management, load testing, GUI testing, functional testing, etc. My suggestion would be to opt for a tool which is on-demand, easy to learn as per your skills, generic and effective for the required type of testing.
Here, I am trying to monitor and serve all the possible top functional tools. One can choose the best one as per the requirement of the environment, organization, cost, skills, etc.
What You Will Learn:
- Most Popular Functional Testing Tools
- #1) Kobiton
- #2) TestComplete
- #3) Digivante
- #4) Avo Assure
- #5) testRigor
- #6) Virtuoso
- #7) Katalon
- #8) Selenium
- #9) Telerik Test Studio
- #10) Coded UI Test
- #11) Micro Focus Unified Functional Testing (UFT)
- #12) Real
- #13) SoapUI
- #14) IBM Rational Functional Tester
- #15) Ranorex Studio
- #16) Worry
- #17) Micro Focus Silk Test
- #18) Tricentis Tosca Testsuite
- #19) Rapise
- #20) QA Wizard
- #21) AutoIt
- #22) Robots
- Additional Tools
- Recommended Reading
Most Popular Functional Testing Tools
Here is the list and comparison of the top functional test tools.
#1) Kobiton
Kobiton offers a functional testing platform for mobile applications. It supports running scripted test automation on Kobiton devices with popular open-source tools and frameworks like Selenium & Appium.
With the use of this tool, functional test automation will be more productive. Kobiton’s Session Explorer allows testers to zoom into the test failures easily.
Kobiton is a consolidated test platform for web, hybrid, and native mobile apps. Parallel automation execution with mobile testing tools is supported by it.
Key Features:
- Kobiton provides the features of automated crash detection and remediation.
- Device Lab Management software provides the facility of creating the mobile testing cloud.
- With the help of a mobile testing lab platform, you will be able to connect with on-premises devices as well as on-desk devices.
- It can be easily integrated into your CI/CD pipeline.
#2) TestComplete
TestComplete is a GUI test automation tool that tests every desktop, web, and mobile application openly integrates within the SDLC ecosystem, is used by both technical and non-technical users. Deliver the quality of your application with incredible scale and efficiency.
Key Features:
- Code or codeless test creation: use record & playback, or script in your choice of a modern language (including JavaScript, Python, and VBScript).
- Superior object recognition, using machine learning and AI, identifies complex objects.
- Support for testing enterprise applications such as SAP, Oracle EBS, and Salesforce.
- Run functional UI tests in parallel in the cloud or on your local machine for continuous testing and continuous delivery.
- Integrates tightly with the tools in your ecosystems, such as CI/CD, test management, issue tracking, and version control, giving you a complete testing lifecycle and version control, giving you a complete testing lifecycle.
#3) Digivante
Digivante raises the bar for digital quality on online platforms. They’re a leading quality assurance service provider, delivering testing for enterprises with unrivalled coverage, speed, and quality. They’re proud of their human approach, blending testers and tech for a solution you can stake your digital product’s future on.
Their flexible solutions integrate with your software development lifecycle to enhance the quality of your digital product releases. Their expert crowd testing community of tens of thousands in over 149 countries delivers the equivalent of weeks of testing in just days or even hours. All defects are verified before being passed on to customers.
- Up to 200 scripted tests in 4 hours.
- Hundreds of real browsers, devices, and operating system combinations tested.
- A professional global crowd community ready to execute tests 24/7, 365 days.
- The Digivante Portal gives you a single location to access your defects with images and video evidence.
- Integrations with JIRA and other test management tools.
#4) Avo Assure
Avo Assure is a functional testing tool that offers 100% no-code test automation. Its heterogeneous capability enables you to test applications across the web, mobile, desktop, ERP applications, mainframes, and associated emulators.
Together, this cross-platform compatibility and no-code approach empowers teams to achieve end-to-end test automation.
Avo Assure helps you to:
- Achieve over 90% test automation with a few clicks of the buttons.
- Enable both technical and business users to carry out testing because of the easy-to-use UI.
- Enable accessibility testing for your applications.
- Define test plans, design test flow, and visualize the entire testing hierarchy through the Mindmaps feature.
- Expedite releases by leveraging 1400+ pre-built keywords
- Decrease testing efforts and time with the SAP test Accelerator pack, specifically designed for SAP with 100’s of pre-built test cases.
- Execute multiple scenarios simultaneously in a single VM independently or in parallel using the Smart Scheduling and Execution feature.
- Schedule test execution during non-business hours.
- Get easy-to-read reports in the form of screenshots and videos of execution.
- Integrate with SDLC and Continuous Integration tools like Jira, Sauce Labs, ALM, TFS, Jenkins, QTest, and more.
- Avo Assure can be hosted on Linux as well.
- Auto-document your business process with a few clicks of the button because Avo Assure integrates with Avo Discover – a no-code process discovery solution.
#5) testRigor
testRigor’s approach is based on how manual QA tests a product with plain English test cases. No knowledge of the underlying codebase is required since testRigor does not rely on Xpaths or code implementation.
testRigor made the cut by proving they have a true end-to-end solution that accommodates all functional testing endeavors. If a manual QA person can test it, testRigor can automate it.
- No technical knowledge required: Test with plain English statements without any coding skills. Define elements as a human would, not by XPaths or CSS Selectors.
- Test any browser device configuration: testRigor’s device and browser configurations to assure complete functional coverage.
- More test coverage in less time: Create tests 15x faster and with 99.5% less test maintenance.
- Parallel testing: Achieve more feedback cycles in minutes instead of hours.
#6) Virtuoso
Virtuoso has spearheaded the move towards AI-augmented functional UI testing tools, making it the most technically advanced tool on our list for web and mobile web testing. Tests are authored using Natural Language Programming – in plain English – similar to how you would author a manual script. This scripted approach means the tool is accessible to everyone without losing the power and flexibility of a coded approach.
For maintenance, Virtuoso launches bots that dive into the application’s DOM and build a comprehensive model of each element based on available selectors, IDs, and attributes. A Machine Learning algorithm is used in every test run to intelligently identify any unexpected changes: no more flaky tests.
- The power and flexibility of code with a codeless approach.
- Test any device or browser in parallel.
- Integrate with your CI/CD
- 95% accuracy in self-healing test.
- Simultaneous authoring and execution of tests.
- Author executable functional UI test before the application under test is built.
#7) Katalon
Katalon is a comprehensive software quality management platform that caters to a wide range of digital applications including API, web, mobile, and desktop. Its main applications include regression and end-to-end testing, and it is used by over 10,000 product teams as a quality checkpoint for new code. Katalon provides all the essential features for planning, authoring, executing, and analyzing automated tests.
Key Technical Strengths:
- Test authoring modes: record-and-playback, drag-and-drop keywords and Java/Groovy scripting
- Easy maintenance: built-in object repository that stores and facilitates access to all UI elements, objects, and locators
- Compatibility testing: run cross-platform API, end-to-end, and regression test suites in parallel on local and cloud browsers, devices, and operating systems
- Native integrations: integration with Jira, qTest, and Xray, offering requirements traceability
- API testing with REST, GraphQL, and SOA.
#8) Selenium
Selenium is an open source functional testing tool and one can download and use it without any cost. It is supported by the Apache 2.0 license. It is a web application testing product and it accepts many languages to write its test scripts, the languages namely include C#, Java, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby and Groovy. It can be deployed on Windows, MAC OS, and Linux.
Selenium can be learned in two parts – Selenium IDE and Selenium WebDriver or Selenium RC. Selenium IDE is nothing but the record and play part of the tool. And it’s better to use Selenium Web driver for testing web applications. The Selenium Web – driver is an advanced form of Selenium RC, which takes care of the later limitations.
Features:
- It’s an Open source product.
- Accepts multiple languages for test scripts.
- Easy to use and has many active users/organizations.
Official website: Selenium
#9) Telerik Test Studio
This is one of the most simple and user-friendly testing tools in the market. It provides functional, exploratory, performance as well as load testing solutions. Though it’s not free, its subscription to download the complete tool along with its license is available at a reasonable amount of $170 per month.
It comes with Visual Studio plug-in, hence in order to bring the best out of this tool, one must know the visual script.
Features:
- Very user-friendly.
- Limited coding in the visual script is required.
- With a built setup and configuration.
- It supports multiple browsers.
- Parallel execution of test scripts is possible here.
- All the locators are inbuilt and centralized.
- The test scripts can be used again.
- Test maintenance cost is very less.
Official website: Telerik Test Studio
#10) Coded UI Test
CUI test is a Microsoft tool. To use this tool the user shall need visual studio 2013 virtual machine which is also a Microsoft product. Its latest version was released with VS 2013.
By using the CUI test tool one can completely automate tests for validating the functionality and the behavior of the application. Before considering this tool, one must check for the latest cost of the CUI test tool and VSTS licenses cost with Microsoft.
Features:
- Easy to install and set up.
- Less use of scripting.
- Understands tables and its contents very logically.
- The database manager is XML based.
- User support and documentation are easily accessible.
Official website: Coded UI Test
#11) Micro Focus Unified Functional Testing (UFT)
Unified Functional Testing (UFT) is an automation tool introduced by Micro Focus for functional and regression testing. It’s also known as the latest version 11.5 of QTP (Quick Test Professional).
The UFT is a combination of Micro Focus QTP (GUI testing tool) and Micro Focus Service Test (API testing tool). In this tool, Visual basic scripting is used to automate the scripts. Here, users can combine manual, automated and framework based test scripts in one IDE.
Features:
- It supports Web, Siebel, people-soft, Java .Net, SAP, Oracle, Web Services, and many other languages and platforms.
- Provides extended support for mobile testing (smartphone, tablets).
- It can be combined with QC and is easy to schedule and monitor.
- Very simple to use, understand, navigate and generate reports of validation results.
- Its license is very costly and works on Windows OS only.
- Its scripting process is easy and takes less time, but the execution of scripts is a time taking process.
Official website: UFT
#12) Real
Sahi is an open-source automation testing tool. It is easy to set up and understand the concept of the record and playback scripts. Sahi being an open source provides limited functionality when compared to the other open source tools.
However, its enhanced version Sahi Pro is a paid tool with license and has an additional set of features to make the tool a complete commercial version package. JavaScript-based scripts are used for programming test scripts.
Features:
- This tool is basically for testers using Agile and traditional environments for web applications.
- It is a browser and OS independent.
- It supports data-driven testing by connecting to Excel or CSV file.
- Low cost and low time are required for maintenance.
- Scripts and playbacks are easy to create and maintain.
- Introducing Sahi automation to manual testers is easy and comfortable.
Official website: Sahi
#13) SoapUI
This is an excellent open-source tool for functional, load, compliance and security testing to test/work with SOA (service-oriented architectures) and REST (representational state transfers) web services.
SOAPUI PRO is the commercial version which has additional features to increase productivity. SOAPUI is cross-platform and also supports IDEA, Eclipse, and NetBeans. Apart from testing, this tool can be used in inspecting, invoking, development, simulation, and mocking.
Features:
- It is a very simple and completely open-source testing tool for technical as well as the non-technical user.
- Includes advanced functionality like a comprehensive view of the project, easy data-driven tests, powerful HTTP monitor, etc.
- Strong, easy and flexible reporting tools: Printable, HTML reports, and Data Export.
- One can create one’s own plug-in or can use any existing third-party plug-ins.
Official website: SoapUI
#14) IBM Rational Functional Tester
This is one of the most popular tools for automated testing. With the help of this automated testing tool and it’s defect management framework, a tester can link all the tests with the requirements and the design documents. The test scripts produced by recording are either in Java or in visual basic.Net.
One can perform functional, regression, GUI and data-driven testing with this tool.
Features:
- It provides a 30-day trial version with all the free help of using this tool successfully.
- It supports a variety of applications like web-based, Adobe PDF documents, terminal emulator based applications, .Net applications, Java applications, SAP, PowerBuilder, Ajax, and many more.
Official website: IBM Rational Functional Tester
#15) Ranorex Studio
Ranorex Studio is a commercial Windows GUI test automation tool that supports functional UI testing on desktop, web, and mobile applications. Used by over 4,000 companies worldwide, Ranorex Studio is easy for beginners with a codeless click-and-go interface and helpful wizards, but powerful for automation experts with a full IDE. See all the supported technologies here.
Features include:
- Reliable object identification, even for web elements with dynamic IDs.
- Shareable object repository and reusable code modules for efficient test creation and reduced maintenance.
- Customizable test report with video reporting of test execution – see what happened in a test run without having to re-run the test!
- Run tests in parallel or distribute them on a Selenium Grid with built-in Selenium Webdriver support.
- Integrates with tools like Jira, Jenkins, TestRail, Git, Travis CI, and more.
#16) Worry
Watir (Web Application Testing in Ruby) is an open source tool for automating web applications. It’s divided into three smaller portions: Watir classic, Watir WebDriver, and Watirspec.
Watir classic supports only IE on windows, but Watir WebDriver supports all the web browsers. Watir WebDriver is a modern version of Watir and is based on Selenium.
Features:
- Tests are easy to read, maintain and understand.
- It’s free of cost.
- It supports all types of web applications that are developed in any technology.
- It supports many browsers.
Official website: Watir
#17) Micro Focus Silk Test
Borland Silk automation testing tool is one of the best tools for maximizing effectiveness, speed and cost-efficiency of applications. This tool provides the best solutions for the web and mobile technologies to the QA, developers, and non-technical stakeholders.
Borland Silktest 13 is the latest version which provides playback support for web applications running in Google Chrome and Firefox 7 on Firefox 11.
Features:
- Cross-browser testing is easy with minimum complexity and cost.
- Supports a broad range of most common technologies.
- Keyword-driven testing enables members of different roles to work closely.
- Mobile testing is faster and easier by using the single test script for desktop and mobile browsers.
Official website: Micro Focus Silk Test
#18) Tricentis Tosca Testsuite
Tricentis Tosca Testsuite is a very effective end to end functional testing tool. Its latest version is Tricentis Tosca Testsuite 9.0 with the new features to enhance its efficiency. This tool is better as it uses a modern model-based approach that is tested in Agile method development.
It tries to create test cases that are independent of the software technologies and provides them in business language that everyone can understand easily. Hence the test cases are created in less time and can be used as manual tests or automated test scripts. Its approach is very effective in maintaining tests with the recurring changes throughout the sprint cycles of Agile methods.
Features:
- Very effective for modern Agile method based model.
- Covers maximum business risks.
- User interface and visual representation are very good.
- Very good use of DB Expert module.
- Test module can be used for different technologies and platforms.
- Can be easily maintained by non-technical users.
Official website: Tricentis Tosca Testsuite
#19) Rapise
Rapise is an automated functional testing tool for web applications and GUI applications (client-server and standalone applications). It has a great inbuilt feature to support different technologies, browsers, and environments.
Some of them are object manager, drag-drop IDE, data-driven testing, hybrid applications, API testing, etc.
It works very well with Spira Test for distributed testing and test management. The basic test scripts are customized and written in JavaScript. It costs $4,999.99 per machine. However, its free trial is also available.
Features:
- It is very fast and flexible.
- Very good for GUI application testing.
- Supports Agile software projects testing.
- Learn and Go feature for creating test scripts in lesser time.
- Available in cloud version in Amazon web services with payment for the usage.
Official website: Rapise
#20) QA Wizard
QA Wizard is a testing solution for functional testing, load testing, and stress testing. A tester can use the same set of functional test scripts for getting performance and stress quality of an application. Like other tools, this tool also supports a variety of technologies like HTML 5, Ajax, .Net, Active X, Oracle Forms, Infragistics controls, QT, etc.
It also supports cross-browser testing using the same set of scripts. It costs $25 per month, including annual maintenance that is free support and upgrades.
Features:
- It’s an all in one automation tool for functional, regression, load and stress test of an application.
- It can automate, windows, Java, and web-based applications.
- With a low investment, it requires less training time.
Official website: QA Wizard
#21) AutoIt
AutoIt is a simple freeware tool to automate windows based task. It works for actions like key presses, win commands and mouse movements. Other versions of AutoIt are AutoItX (ActiveX control version) and AutoItDLL (DLL version).
Its scripts can be compressed and stand-alone executed on computers which do not have AutoIt interpreter installed.
Features:
- Supports protocols like TCP and UDP.
- Supports component object modeling objects.
- Can handle windows and processes.
- Scripts can be compressed into a stand-alone executable.
Official website: AutoIt
#22) Robots
Robotium is an open-source testing tool for Android applications. This is similar to Selenium but very easy to use because of its simple API. Apart from functional, it can also be used for system and User acceptance testing.
Features:
- It has a simple API, hence it is easy to learn and write test cases.
- Good for android and hybrid applications.
- Takes less time in execution.
Official website: Robotium
#23) test IO
Make sure that your web apps, websites and mobile apps work everywhere by running functional tests on real devices, real browsers, and under real-world conditions.
Running functional tests with test IO lets you call upon the skill and insight of thousands of testing professionals to improve the quality of your websites and mobile apps. Over two hundred customer-obsessed organizations rely on the power and flexibility of test IO to ship high-quality software faster.
- Test on real devices – Expand your coverage to hundreds of devices, platforms, and real people in real-world conditions. Make sure your software works everywhere.
- Get feedback from real humans – Our professional testers have fresh and unbiased eyes on your product. Testers find bugs that your internal team might not catch.
- Release faster – Human-powered doesn’t mean slow. Remove the QA bottleneck with on-demand, flexible testing that scales up with your needs.
Additional Tools
#24) Vtest
V-test is a functional and regression testing tool for web applications. Little programming skill of Javascript is required for scripting languages. Like other tools this tool includes four main steps to work: Recording, Playing, Editing, and Analysis.
Official website: Vtest
#25) Q Engine
Along with functional testing, Q Engine is capable of testing a website or web service on Windows and Linux with capability testing, Stress testing, Regressed testing, Performance testing, etc.
Official website: Q Engine
#26) SauceLabs
This testing tool is made for continuous integration and continuous delivery type environment and hence it is best in the cloud-based platform. It supports more than 700 combinations of browsers, OS and device platforms.
Official website: SauceLabs
#27) TestDrive
TestDrive is a fast automation tool that requires no scripting language. It supports platforms like Windows/Linux and many languages like Java, .Net, AJAX, Oracle, etc.
Official website: TestDrive
#28) Cucumber
Cucumber is an open-source testing tool that is written in the Ruby language. This tool works best for behavior-driven development. But it can also be used to test other languages like Java, C#, and Python. Cucumber for testing uses some Ruby programming.
Official website: Cucumber
#29) Marathon
Marathon is a testing tool that is made up of JAVA/SWING for testing GUI applications. It is extremely simple and open-source tool. The use is not required to know Java or swing to work with it. However, the scripts are in Python.
This tool is mainly used for functional testing with acceptance tests and end-user tests.
Official website: Marathon
#30) TestMaker
TestMaker is an automation platform for different types of applications like Web, SOA (Service Oriented Architecture), RIA (Rich Internet Application) and BPM (Business Process Management). It adapts tests for different uses which are already written in Selenium, SOAPUI, PHP, Ruby, etc.
Its enterprise can be used as a complete package for functional, load and performance testing along with business service monitoring.
Official website: TestMaker
#31) Max Q
Max Q is an open source web application testing tool. It provides all important features like HTTP test recording, test scripting and test running. It is written in Java and generates test scripts in PYTHON.
#32) Oracle Application Testing Suite by Oracle
The Oracle application testing tool belongs to the family of the Oracle Enterprise Manager product. It is capable of doing many types of automated testing including functional and regression testing of web applications, web services, Oracle applications, and Oracle database.
The tool uses the Eclipse-based scripting platform for functional and regression test scripts called OpenScript. By using JAVA the user can enhance/customize the scripts.
Official website: Oracle Application testing suite by Oracle
#33) Parasoft Jtest by ParaSoft.com
Jtest is an automation tool by Parasoft for Java software testing and Static analysis. Apart from this, the tool is having many other important features. Hence it is used by many companies like Cisco, Wipro etc. on the license.
Official website: Parasoft Jtest by ParaSoft.com
#34) Certify Execution Manager by WorkSoft.com
Using the Certify Execution manager is like following a set of processes to ensure the quality of the system. The set of processes includes grouping test scenarios, setting the orders/priorities of tasks, managing dependencies, and availability of resources during automation testing.
Official website: Certify Execution manager by WorkSoft.com
#35) Touchtest by Soasta.com
Touchtest automation tool is basically for mobile testing, it includes functional testing and regression testing. This tool is efficient in recording and replaying all the mobile applications with full accuracy for performance and functional testing.
Official website: Touchtest by Soasta.com
#36) SmarteScript by Smartesoft.com
SmarteScript is easy for new users but it also provides strong functionalities for experienced users. No language skills are required to use this tool. It supports many platforms like All Microsoft .NET compilers, Java, AJAX, IE, VB6, Microsoft Visual C++, Intel C++, Microsoft Visual Basic, and Console.
Official website: SmarteScript by Smartesoft.com
Feel free to pick any tool from the above list based on your project requirement!!