The testing landscape is crowded, and developers often end up with a mix of tools that don’t work well together. The result: flaky tests, duplicated effort, and limited visibility across test layers. This checklist lays out practical technology stacks for most common application types - SaaS, e-commerce, and canvas-based apps - and covers major testing categories from unit to API testing.
Unit testing
- Jest: great for javascript / typescript services and React-based frontend
- pytest: reliable for Python-based microservices or backend logic
- xUnit / NUnit: proven .NET frameworks with good IDE integration
- Vitest: our preferred solution fits nicely with typescript
- Mocha + Chai: flexible for Node.js or custom server logic
Integration testing
- Cypress component tests: integrate frontend and backend in one environment
- Component testing in Storybook: tests UI components in isolation, provides a sandbox environment where each component can be rendered with different states outside your main app
- pytest + Docker Compose: run backend + DB integration tests locally
- pytest + requests: simple setup for backend-to-backend or service-to-service tests
End-to-end testing
- Octomind: AI-powered full-service testing platform to create, run and maintain E2E tests; AI-powered tests generation, out-of-the-box test runner, automated test failure detection and auto-fix
- Playwright: modern code-first testing framework, supports multiple browsers and parallel runs
- Cypress: testing framework and developer-friendly E2E runner, strong for component + browser tests
Mobile app testing
- XCUITest / SwifUITest for iOS + Espresso for Android - the "native" way to do testing
- Appium: standard open-source choice for Android / iOS automation
- ACCELQ: no-code mobile test automation platform works well for React Native apps
- BrowserStack – cloud device testing with parallel runs
- Firebase Test Lab – Scalable testing for native Android apps
Cross-browser testing
- LambdaTest: wide range of browser / OS combos
- Playwright: supports Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit in parallel
- Sauce Labs: mature, scalable device / browser cloud
Monitoring in production
- Datadog: full-stack observability (infrastructure + application + user experience)
- Octomind: schedule regular e2e test runs of the production environment
- Grafana Cloud (with Prometheus + Loki + Tempo): open-source-friendly, customizable observability stack
- Checkly: unifies testing, monitoring, & observability with an AI-native workflow
Accessibility testing
- axe-core: industry standard for accessibility rule validation
- Mabl: primarily functional test automation with an accessibility testing extension so you can reuse your existing UI tests
- Lighthouse (Google): built into Chrome and available via command line / Node modules
API testing
- Postman: still the go-to for teams validating service contracts
- Hoppscotch: lightweight alternative to Postman
- SoapUI: functional testing tool for REST, SOAP and GraphQL APIs with an OS alternative
Performance testing
- Apache JMeter: open-source, Java based application to load test functional behavior and measure performance
- Gatling: all in one load testing for large orgs
- k6: load test checkout APIs and product search endpoints
- Chrome DevTools Tracing: manual but essential for GPU-bound performance issues
Final advice on building a testing stack
- Start small - don’t add everything at once. Begin with solid unit tests and expand upward.
- Automate what’s repetitive, not what’s random - use AI-driven tools like Octomind for unstable, UI-heavy flows, and keep deterministic logic under code-based tests.
- Unify your reporting - mix-and-match tools are fine, but feed all results into one dashboard (CI/CD, Datadog, Grafana, etc.).
- Test early, test continuously - the best testing stack is the one that runs on every commit and breaks fast when something’s off.
