It can be challenging to decide which practice test automation app to use, as there are many on the market and more joining the crowd. So, how does a developer choose, and what recommendations would they offer those still in the discovery phase?
We recently talked with a seasoned developer and asked him about some recommendations to get introduced to practicing Test Automation. He advised us that he always requires an acceptable application under test whenever he needs to undertake some test automation-related exercise or proof of concept.
There are a hundred various sample apps available, and it might be difficult to find a nice app without wasting too much time on it. As a result, he selected the top five most often used sample web applications and gave us a quick explanation of his selection.
These applications are excellent for testing various capabilities before implementing them with a unified test management solution for your production environment.
Why Developers Need Test Automation Practice Applications
Automation testing requires dedicated practice applications
As a developer looking to enhance your test automation skills, you might wonder why you should use dedicated practice applications rather than testing against production sites or building your own test environment. Here are compelling reasons:
Accelerated Learning Without Consequences
Practice applications provide a risk-free environment where you can experiment with automation techniques without worrying about breaking production systems. Whether you're learning Selenium, Cypress, Playwright, or any other testing framework, these applications allow you to make mistakes and learn from them without real-world consequences.
Tool Evaluation and Selection
Before committing to a specific testing framework for your production project, you need to evaluate how different tools handle various web components and scenarios. Practice applications let you compare multiple automation frameworks against identical test cases, helping you make an informed decision about which tool best fits your project's needs.
Ready-Made Edge Cases
Many practice applications intentionally include challenging UI components, unusual patterns, and edge cases that are difficult to automate. These pre-built challenges save you from having to create complex test scenarios yourself and prepare you for real-world testing obstacles.
Consistent Reference Point
When troubleshooting automation issues, having a stable reference application helps isolate whether problems stem from your test code or changes in the application under test. Practice applications provide this consistent baseline that doesn't change unexpectedly.
Proof of Concept Development
When proposing a new testing approach to your team, you need concrete evidence that your solution works. Practice applications allow you to quickly develop proof of concepts that demonstrate the effectiveness of your automation strategy before implementing it in your production codebase.
Community Support and Resources
Popular practice applications have established communities and extensive documentation. When you encounter challenges, you can find solutions from other developers who have already solved similar problems, accelerating your learning process.
Time and Resource Efficiency
Setting up your own test environment with all the necessary components (authentication, databases, APIs) takes significant time and resources. Practice applications give you immediate access to fully functional features, allowing you to focus on writing tests rather than building test infrastructure.
Collaboration Readiness
Practice applications prepare teams for real-world collaboration by simulating how tests integrate with CI/CD pipelines and test management tools. Without this, teams often struggle with siloed test results and poor visibility across roles (QA, devs, product).
By utilizing these specialized practice applications, you can become proficient in test automation more quickly, experiment with advanced techniques in a safe environment, and ultimately deliver more reliable automated tests for your production applications.
Selection Criteria for Practice Applications
Automation testing tools vary but should meet industry standard criteria
Ideal practice apps provide source code access (for customization), varied complexity levels (quick checks to deep testing), and full-stack components (UI + API + database) to mimic real-world scenarios.
Why Use Dedicated Test Automation Practice Sites?
Before diving into the specific applications, it's worth understanding why dedicated test automation practice sites offer advantages over testing against production websites:
- Controlled Environment—Practice sites provide a stable testing ground that won't unexpectedly change, unlike production websites, which undergo frequent updates.
- Legal Considerations—Many production websites have terms of service that explicitly prohibit automated testing, which could potentially lead to IP blocking or legal issues.
- Comprehensive Testing Scenarios—Practice sites are often designed with specific testing challenges in mind, allowing you to encounter and solve common automation hurdles.
- Performance Testing Capabilities—You can perform load and stress testing without worrying about disrupting actual services or violating terms of use.
- Community Support—Many practice platforms have established communities where users can share solutions and learn from others who are tackling the same challenges.
Test automation is a crucial part of modern quality assurance, so let’s dive into the different test automation tools available.
Top Five Test Automation Practice Web Applications
1. TodoMVC (TasteJS)
Public instance: https://todomvc.com
GitHub: https://github.com/tastejs/todomvc
Underlying technology: ~50 different frontend frameworks
When should we utilize it? For Front-End proofs of concept and prototyping. All implementations in various technologies have public instances, and because the app lacks a backend, it might be used without the requirement to develop a private instance.
2. Restful Booker (Mark Winteringham)
Public instance: https://restful-booker.herokuapp.com
GitHub: https://github.com/mwinteringham/restful-booker
Underlying technology: NodeJS/Express
When should we utilize it? If you require a CRUD restful API for tool testing or demonstrations. It has purposely built-in bugs that can be quite useful for API testing practice.
API testing is becoming increasingly important in test automation strategies. For more on this topic, Top 10 Selenium Exceptions and How to Handle Them offers insights on API-related errors and integration challenges.
3. The Internet (Saucelabs)
Public instance: http://the-internet.herokuapp.com
GitHub: https://github.com/saucelabs/the-internet
Underlying technology: Ruby/HTML/CSS
When should we utilize it: This program is nicely described in the official about section: An example application that captures conspicuous and unsightly web functionality. When you need to experiment with iframes, big DOM, or specialized HTML components, it's fine to use the Internet.
4. Real World App (Cypress.io)
Public instance: https://www.cypress.io
GitHub: https://github.com/cypress-io/cypress-realworld-app
Underlying technology: NodeJS/Express/React/lowdb
When should we use it? As a simple yet comprehensive web application for E2E testing practice. It also offers a variety of authentication techniques (Auth0, Okta, Amazon Cognito, Google).
Modern testing frameworks like Cypress and Playwright are transforming the automation landscape. Compare these tools in Playwright vs Selenium: The Ultimate Guide to Modern Test Automation.
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5. Realworld (Thinkster & several contributors)
Public instance: https://demo.realworld.io
GitHub: https://github.com/gothinkster/realworld
All implementations: https://codebase.show/projects/realworld
Underlying technology: ~100 different variants of frontend/backend/DB frameworks
When should we use it? When special needs are linked to application technology. Also, when there is a need for an application that is as similar to a real app as feasible in terms of complexity that a developer wants to duplicate. This application needs the setup of a frontend, backend, routing, and a database, thus, it is not suitable for short tests.
Advanced Testing Techniques for Practice Applications
When working with these practice applications, consider implementing these advanced testing strategies to further enhance your skills:
Cross-Browser Testing
Practice running your test automation scripts across multiple browsers to identify rendering inconsistencies and browser-specific behaviors. This mirrors real-world challenges where applications need to work flawlessly across Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge.
Mobile Responsiveness Testing
Many practice applications are responsive by design, allowing you to practice mobile testing strategies. Create test scenarios that verify proper scaling, element positioning, and functionality across different viewport sizes.
Accessibility Testing
Incorporate accessibility testing into your automation practice by checking for ARIA attributes, proper heading structure, and keyboard navigation. This is becoming increasingly important in modern web development and is often overlooked in test automation strategies.
Performance Metrics Collection
Extend your automation scripts to capture load times, rendering performance, and other metrics. These data points can help you establish performance baselines and detect regressions in your practice applications.
End-to-End Test Automation Should Be Easy to Maintain
Complexity is not a friend of automation testing. Choose an automation tool that simplifies testing.
This developer began building up test automation using Cypress once he had sketched out the manual tests he intended to run regularly, roughly a hundred in total. He believes Cypress is an excellent tool for performing end-to-end testing because it automatically records videos of test runs, and its test runner is Google Chrome, which almost all engineers are acquainted with. “It also captures the activities it performed on the DOM on video, providing you with clear, visually debuggable recordings of failed test runs. It's a fantastic tool right out of the box,” he says.
On the other hand, he says Selenium, a battle-tested browser automation technology, is used elsewhere for process automation. He says his client evaluated it as a way to reduce the number of technologies in the stack, but chose Cypress because of the benefits listed above. “It was love at first sight when they first started using Cypress and discovered that integrating TestQuality with GitHub or Jira also worked wonderfully in CI with little configuration!
Their Cypress tests are comprehensive end-to-end tests; nothing is mocked out. They have a staging environment where the tests are conducted, complete with their own clones of the databases and other services required by their platform. The tests were to be written in such a way that they resembled human-readable test stages as much as feasible.
Most of the time, you're reading through a failed exam. That means you have a problem to solve, and understanding the meaning of the test should be the least of your worries. A good test case should be self-documenting and easy to understand. It is also important to consider the reusability of testing code. Assume you have a top bar in your app that allows users to choose between experiences; you'd want to reuse the code that enables those actions.”
Integrating Practice Applications into Your CI/CD Pipeline
Taking your automation skills to the next level involves setting up a continuous integration and delivery pipeline to run tests automatically. Consider these steps when integrating your practice test automation with CI/CD:
- Version Control Setup - Host your test code in a repository like GitHub where you can track changes and collaborate with others.
- CI Tool Selection - Choose a CI platform like Jenkins, CircleCI, or GitHub Actions to automatically run your tests.
- Test Result Management - Configure your pipeline to report test results to a test management platform like TestQuality's integrated test management solution for better visibility and tracking.
- Scheduled Test Execution - Set up scheduled test runs to ensure continuous validation of your practice applications.
- Parallel Test Execution - Practice running tests in parallel to reduce execution time, a crucial skill for enterprise-level test automation.
Streamlining Practice with Test Management
While practice apps build individual skills, teams need tools like TestQuality to unify results across frameworks (Cypress, Selenium, etc.). For example:
- Centralized Reporting: Aggregate test results from TodoMVC, Restful Booker, and other practice apps into shared dashboards.
- Requirement Traceability: Link practice tests to real-world scenarios (e.g., "The Internet’s iframe tests" → "Payment iframe in production").
- CI/CD Visibility: Auto-sync practice test runs from GitHub Actions/Jenkins to track progress.
Points to Remember with Automation Testing
Practicing test automation is just that—a practice. However, there are a few best practices to implement when trying out any automation testing app:
- Try to keep the e2e testing as close to user-facing as feasible. This aids with maintenance, readability, and establishes the appropriate standards for the engineering team.
- Don't be scared to incorporate e2e test support right into your API. If you require some UI that is only visible in e2e testing, that's OK — it's a key use case that has to be addressed.
TestQuality can simplify test case creation and organization. The application offers a highly competitive price, but it is free when used with GitHub free repositories, providing rich and flexible reporting that can help you to visualize and understand where you and your dev or QA Team are in your project's quality lifecycle. Be sure to look for analytics that can help identify the quality and effectiveness of your test cases and testing efforts to ensure you're building and executing the most effective tests for your efforts. Sign up for a free TestQuality trial.
