Software testing does not stop at checking individual components. Even if those components are working perfectly fine individually, issues can still arise when we combine them together into a unified system. Integration testing ensures that components communicate well with each other to form a complete application, and QA teams usually leverage integration testing tools to achieve that.
In this article, we will review in-depth the top 10 integration testing tools on the current market, with detailed information about the key features, pricing, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of each tool so that you can make a more informed decision.
📚 Read More: What is Integration Testing? A Complete Guide
What Are Integration Testing Tools?
Integration testing tools are software applications designed to support the testing of interactions between software components.
These tools come with ready-to-use features built with integration testing best practices in mind, so that QA teams can get started more quickly without any concerns regarding configuration, management, maintenance, or reporting. All of the administrative and repetitive tasks can be handled by the tool.
Benefits of Integration Testing Tools
Without using integration testing tools, QA teams have 2 options:
- Manually perform integration testing, which has been proven to be quite time-consuming and even counterproductive.
- Write test scripts to automate integration testing using an automation testing framework such as Selenium (for web browsers) or TestNG (for Java). This approach can be great in the beginning, but as the application scales and the number of software components to be tested increases exponentially, the effort required to manage and maintain those test scripts also increases accordingly.
This is where integration testing tools shine through. They come with unique benefits that save your team from a lot of headaches:
- Simplicity: integration testing tools are built to simplify the integration testing process with many low-code features. Instead of writing test scripts from scratch to automate certain interactions, they now only have to do some drag-and-drop, or even type out keywords to instruct the tool on what to do.
- Automation: most, if not all, integration testing tools should come with automation capabilities, enabling teams to execute test cases automatically without much human intervention, making the process more efficient and repeatable.
- Isolation: similar to unit testing, components undergoing integration testing must be isolated from the entire system, so that interactions among them do not tamper with the end results. A good integration testing tool should provide this level of control when creating test cases.
- Scalability: integration testing operations usually scales extremely fast, since each new component added to the software introduces additional interaction points and potential combinations with a lot of existing components. A good integration testing tool should provide high flexibility and scalability to accommodate for this characteristic.
- Comprehensiveness: interactions among software components can be both functional and visual. Integration testing tools should therefore be able to test more than just the functionality, but also the UI and APi to ensure that quality is achieved consistently across channels.
- Logging and Reporting: this administrative task should be handled by the tool so that testers can have more time to focus on testing.
- Customization: a certain degree of customization enables experienced testers to create test scripts for highly specific issues. They can get the best of both worlds: automating the common scenarios, but script a dedicated test case to adapt to unique and ad-hoc requirements.
Key Features of Integration Testing Tools
Integration testing tools usually comes with the following features:
Criteria For Selecting Integration Testing Tools
- Ensure that the tool is compatible with the existing tech-stack your organization uses
- Seamless integration with the current IDE and CI/CD pipeline
- Ease of use and decent learning curve relative to your team’s technical expertise
- Scripting and test design support
- Test data management features available
- Reporting and analytics
- Security compliance
- AUTs supported (web, API, desktop, mobile, etc.)
- Community support
- Scalability (in terms of pricing plan)
Best Integration Testing Tools Currently
1. Katalon
With Katalon, creating integration tests is simple. You can send any type of API request, configure headers, query parameters, request bodies, and authentication tokens without coding. For advanced users, you can switch to scripting mode with Java or Groovy. Data driven and BDD testing are supported out of the box.
- API test management: Save collections of API requests as test suites or collections. Run them on a schedule or trigger them directly in your CI/CD pipeline.
- API test execution: Use Katalon TestOps to manage test cases, schedule test runs, and view dashboards of results. Tests can also be executed in CLI for flexibility.
- API test planning: Integrate with Slack, Microsoft Teams, Jira, and other tools to keep everyone updated on test results and coverage.
- Drag and drop test creation: Build tests without coding by using “Add Web Service Keyword” and the Object Repository for quick element management.
Katalon is constantly improving. It offers free API testing courses through Katalon Academy to help QA teams get up to speed quickly. With integrations for CI/CD, parallel execution, and detailed reporting, it is one of the most complete web API functional testing tools on the market.
Katalon stands out as a strong all-in-one alternative to Postman. QA teams that want both web API automation tools and UI automation in a single platform will find it efficient and scalable.
Visit Katalon Website | Pricing | G2 Reviews
Download Katalon For Free or Book A Call With Our Team
2. Postman
Postman is a comprehensive API development and testing platform designed to simplify the process of building, testing, and documenting APIs. While its main use case is API testing, Postman is also commonly leveraged for integration testing. You can easily create test suites that cover API endpoints to test integration scenarios with external digital services.
Highlight Features:
- Support the entire API testing lifecycle from API test creation, management, execution, to reporting
- Primarily designed for RESTful APIs, although it can also handle SOAP requests to a certain extent.
- Enable automated integration testing by creating collections of requests and defining test scripts using JavaScript. Test scripts are written directly in the Postman interface for easy customization.
- Allow for API mocking creation to simulate the behavior of backend services in case they are not yet available.
- Data-driven testing supported
- Integrate seamlessly with your existing CI/CD pipeline
- An environment manager is available to help you manage different configurations and endpoints for your integration tests.
- Collaboration features included
Website: Postman API Platform
Pricing: Postman pricing starts from $14/month per user (Basic plan), billed annually. There is also a Free plan for testers to experiment with the Platform without initial commitments.
3. SoapUI
SoapUI is a popular open-source tool used for testing web services, including SOAP and REST APIs. It is also commonly used as an integration testing tool with a user-friendly graphical interface that allows users to create test cases, define test steps, and configure test data easily.
Highlight Features:
- SoapUI supports both SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) and REST (Representational State Transfer) web services, making it compatible with a variety of APIs.
- Offers a wide range of assertion types to validate API responses, including status codes, content, headers, and more
- Scripting mode to create custom logic and automate complex test scenarios.
- Users can parameterize their test cases to easily change input data, making it simple to test different scenarios without modifying the test case structure.
- Security testing and load testing also supported
Website: SoapUI
Pricing: There are 3 modules for you to choose from, including API Test Module, API Performance Module, and API Virtualization Module
4. Citrus
Citrus is an open-source Java-based integration testing framework designed for automated integration testing of messaging systems, APIs, databases, and so much more. It is tailored for testing scenarios that involve interactions between different components and systems in an enterprise architecture.
Citrus can play a dual role during integration tests, acting both as a client and a consumer. As a client, Citrus sends messages (requests) to the System Under Test. As a consumer, it receives and processes messages (responses) from the System Under Test, simulating real-world interactions between systems.
Source: Citrus Framework
Highlighted Features:
- Citrus can validate the messages exchanged between itself and the System Under Test, checking the message content, headers, attachments, and other control data, ensuring that it meets the expected criteria of the integration test requirements.
- Citrus provides a Java-fluent API to make it easy for testers to define the expected behavior and assertions within the test.
- Automated test execution in CI/CD pipeline
- Integrate with frameworks like Apache Camel, Arquillian, Kubernetes and Docker to support automated integration testing of Microservice applications
- Integrate with the Spring framework to create robust, enterprise-grade integration tests.
- BDD testing supported (writing tests in natural language for both technical and non-technical to understand)
Pricing: Open-source
5. Selenium
Selenium is a popular open-source automation testing framework widely favored by developers for its capability to automate web browser interactions. Not just integration testing, Selenium can be leveraged to test a wide variety of web scenarios. You can script and automate actions such as clicking buttons, filling out forms, navigating between pages, and much more.
However, to fully leverage Selenium, the tester must have a decent level of coding experience. It is only a framework, and to truly automate test cases, testers must actively write and maintain test scripts they build. There are no built-in frameworks for data-driven testing or reporting features, so QA teams also have to build that all by themselves. This high learning curve is worth it considering the level of customization it gives to the team.
Highlight Features:
- Support multiple web browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari, etc.)
- Write scripts in your preferred language (Java, Python, C#, Ruby, and JavaScript()
- You can run tests without a visible UI (headless browser), but UI testing is also supported, giving you a comprehensive integration testing experience
- Execute tests in parallel with Selenium Grid
- Explicit and implicit wait mechanisms to handle synchronization issues
- Selenium allows you to capture screenshots and videos during test execution, aiding in debugging and reporting.
- Large and active user community
Website: Selenium Dev
Pricing: Open-source
6. IBM Rational Integration Tester (formerly GreenHat)
IBM Rational Integration Tester simplifies testing for SOA (service-oriented architecture) messaging and business process integration projects. You can create tests without scripting, either by recording existing system actions or based on requirements. Simply specify the data to send and what data you expect in return.
IBM also lets you make virtual services to remove dependencies and enable testing at any stage. These virtual services can be used with IBM Rational Test Virtualization Server to create flexible, on-demand test environments for all testing phases.
Highlight Features:
- Create, send, and receive messages for testing
- Supports many data formats, including XML, JSON, and others commonly used in integration scenarios.
- Service virtualization to simulate external dependencies, allowing you to test components in isolation.
- Record-and-Playback features to capture real-world scenarios
- Data-driven testing supported
- CI/CD pipeline integration supported
- Integrates well with other IBM DevOps solutions like IBM UrbanCode Deploy and IBM Jenkins to streamline the deployment and testing process.
Website: Rational Integration Tester
Pricing: You can use IBM Rational Integration Tester Starter Edition to get started quickly writing and running, stubs, and tests. The starter edition is no-charge and can be downloaded from the Continuous Testing web site.
7. Leapwork
Leapwork is a no-code automation platform designed for test automation, process automation, and robotic process automation (RPA). It enables users to create automation workflows and test cases without the need for coding or scripting.
As an integration testing tool, Leapwork's no-code approach allows both testers and non-technical users to design integration test cases and workflows through a visual interface, making it accessible to a wide range of team members.
Highlight Features:
- Easy-to-use building blocks to craft integration test cases without having to write a single line of code
- Data-driven automation included straight out of the box.
- Point and click to capture any web element. Self-healing mechanism supported to fix broken test scripts.
- Low learning curve
- Work across SAP, Windows, Citrix, Java, IBM, Oracle, and many other applications, allowing for comprehensive integration testing
- Scheduling and ad-hoc running included out of the box.
- Built-in REST API to help DevOps integrate it with other third-party systems
Website: Leapwork
Pricing: Free Trial option available. For detailed quote, you can contact Sales.
8. Tessy
Tessy is a commercial tool developed by Razorcat, specifically designed for testing embedded software, allowing you to create and execute test cases at the unit level (testing individual functions or methods) and at the integration level (testing the interaction between various components or modules).
Highlight Features:
- TESSY automates the entire unit test cycle, including regression testing, for embedded software written in C/C++ on various target systems.
- Easy-to-install and user-friendly interface that guides you through project setup, test design, execution, result analysis, and reporting.
- TESSY allows you to define a customized test project structure with collections and folders, configure environment variables, and set up your compiler/debugger.
- Design test cases using the Classification Tree Method (CTM) with an integrated graphical user interface, simplifying the input/output setup within the CTE.
- Edit test data efficiently using the tabular Test Data Editor, complete with data visualization through plots.
- Integrate additional code seamlessly within the Test Data Editor perspective, allowing custom code modifications and register manipulation.
Website: Tessy from Razorcat
Pricing: Contact Sales
9. LDRA
LDRA is a well-known company that specializes in software testing and verification tools for safety-critical and embedded systems. LDRA offers a range of tools and solutions for software quality assurance, including static analysis, dynamic analysis, and unit testing.
In the LDRA toolsuite, LDRA TBrun is a unit and integration test tool that streamlines the creation and management of test harnesses and tests. It automates these processes, reducing manual testing efforts and enabling developers to focus on implementing correct software functionality.
TBrun is user-friendly and suits both those aiming to meet structural analysis and unit test requirements for functional safety and cybersecurity standards, as well as those seeking to enhance software quality. LDRA TBrun supports testing on various platforms, including host, target, and simulator environments, and its instrumentation technology is optimized for a wide range of processors, from highly constrained microcontrollers to high-performance processors.
Highlight Features:
- Easily test on host, target, or simulator with user-friendly interfaces.
- Automatically generate test drivers/harnesses without manual scripting.
- Manage test case files for regression testing.
- Enable structural coverage analysis with a "white box" test mode.
- Automatically create stubs for functions and variables outside the test scope.
- Automate exception handling.
- Store and maintain test data and results for automated regression analysis.
- Detect source code changes automatically.
- Use tool-driven test vector generation.
- TBextreme, an extension of TBrun, automates unit/module/integration testing by generating appropriate test vectors and streamlining the bottom-up testing process.
Website: LDRA TBrun
Pricing: 30-day Free Trial upon registering
10. TestSigma
TestSigma is an emerging automation testing tool that supports testing on many AUTs, including web, API, desktop, and also mobile. This makes it a good choice for integration testing also.
Highlight Features:
- No-code testing platform that allows you to create tests in plain English
- Includes AI-supported features for efficient test maintenance and execution in the cloud.
- Test reports are user-friendly with debugging features like screenshots, videos, and logs. These reports can be customized to your needs.
- It integrates smoothly with popular CI/CD tools and offers the advantage of cloud accessibility.
Website: TestSigma
Pricing: Free plan available, with paid plans starting from $349/month
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