Top 12 Open Source Alternatives to Protractor (deprecated)

Introduction and Context

Protractor was introduced by the Angular team as an end-to-end (E2E) testing framework focused on Angular applications. Built on top of Selenium WebDriver, it brought framework-aware features—like automatic waiting for Angular’s digest cycle—that made testing Angular web apps more reliable than using vanilla Selenium alone. It integrated well with JavaScript test runners such as Jasmine and Mocha, plugged neatly into CI/CD pipelines, and was widely adopted by teams building SPAs during Angular’s rapid growth.

Over time, the web testing landscape matured. Newer tools emerged with richer debugging, automatic waits for any front-end framework, faster execution via browser-specific protocols, and better developer ergonomics. With official deprecation announced, Protractor is no longer recommended for new projects, and teams maintaining legacy suites are actively evaluating replacements.

This guide explores top open source alternatives—spanning web, mobile, desktop, and game UI automation—so you can choose the best fit for your application stack and team.

Overview: The Top 12 Alternatives Covered

Here are the top 12 open source alternatives to Protractor (deprecated):

• Airtest + Poco

• Airtest Project

• Appium Flutter Driver

• Capybara

• FitNesse

• Maestro

• Playwright Component Testing

• Selene (Yashaka)

• Serenity BDD

• UI Automator

• White

• Winium

Why Look for Protractor Alternatives?

• Deprecation and maintenance risk

• Synchronization and flakiness

• Setup and maintenance overhead

• Limited focus on mobile and desktop

• Debugging and reporting limitations

Detailed Breakdown of Alternatives

Below you’ll find a consistent, at-a-glance view of each tool, followed by strengths and a comparison to Protractor.

1) Airtest + Poco

Airtest + Poco is an open source UI automation suite from the NetEase community. Airtest focuses on image-based (computer vision) automation and device control, while Poco offers powerful object-hierarchy access for games and apps. Together, they allow you to automate Android, iOS, and Windows apps—particularly useful for scenarios where DOM-based selectors don’t exist.

• At a glance:

• Core strengths:

• Compared to Protractor (deprecated):

2) Airtest Project

Airtest Project focuses heavily on game UI automation across Android and Windows, using robust CV-based interactions. It’s particularly good at recognizing visual elements in dynamic scenes, which is a known challenge in game testing.

• At a glance:

• Core strengths:

• Compared to Protractor (deprecated):

3) Appium Flutter Driver

Appium Flutter Driver extends Appium to interact directly with Flutter widgets on iOS and Android. Instead of relying on accessibility layers alone, it communicates with the Flutter engine to expose the widget tree, enabling precise and reliable mobile UI automation for Flutter apps.

• At a glance:

• Core strengths:

• Compared to Protractor (deprecated):

4) Capybara

Capybara is a popular Ruby library for high-level acceptance tests of web applications. Paired with drivers like Selenium, Cuprite, or Apparition, it offers a clean DSL that reads like user journeys and automatically handles waiting for asynchronous content.

• At a glance:

• Core strengths:

• Compared to Protractor (deprecated):

5) FitNesse

FitNesse is a wiki-based acceptance testing framework that encourages collaboration between developers, testers, and business stakeholders. It supports creating executable specifications with fixtures that can drive web UIs, APIs, or backends, bringing ATDD practices to life.

• At a glance:

• Core strengths:

• Compared to Protractor (deprecated):

6) Maestro

Maestro is a declarative mobile UI testing framework for iOS and Android. You describe test flows in YAML, which keeps tests concise and easy to review. It aims to be simple to set up, stable by default, and friendly to CI/CD and cloud device runners.

• At a glance:

• Core strengths:

• Compared to Protractor (deprecated):

7) Playwright Component Testing

Playwright Component Testing brings component-level testing to the browser for frameworks like Angular, React, Vue, and others. Instead of full-page E2E, it mounts individual components, enabling fast, deterministic tests with the same modern primitives that power Playwright E2E.

• At a glance:

• Core strengths:

• Compared to Protractor (deprecated):

8) Selene (Yashaka)

Selene (by the open source community) is a concise Python wrapper around Selenium inspired by Selenide. It provides a more expressive API, built-in waits, and collection operations that make writing stable browser tests in Python faster and less error-prone.

• At a glance:

• Core strengths:

• Compared to Protractor (deprecated):

9) Serenity BDD

Serenity BDD is a comprehensive test automation and reporting framework that supports the Screenplay Pattern and integrates with Selenium, Appium, REST clients, and BDD tools like Cucumber. It emphasizes living documentation and rich, actionable reports for stakeholders.

• At a glance:

• Core strengths:

• Compared to Protractor (deprecated):

10) UI Automator

UI Automator is Google’s framework for Android UI testing at the system level. It can interact across applications and with system dialogs, making it ideal for device-wide scenarios that app-level frameworks cannot cover.

• At a glance:

• Core strengths:

• Compared to Protractor (deprecated):

11) White

White (commonly known as TestStack White) is a Windows UI automation framework for desktop applications. It leverages Microsoft UI Automation (UIA) to interact with WPF, WinForms, and other Windows technologies.

• At a glance:

• Core strengths:

• Compared to Protractor (deprecated):

12) Winium

Winium is an older, Selenium-based automation framework for Windows desktop applications. Its Selenium-like WebDriver protocol makes it approachable for teams with WebDriver experience, though community activity has slowed.

• At a glance:

• Core strengths:

• Compared to Protractor (deprecated):

Things to Consider Before Choosing a Protractor Alternative

• Application scope and platforms

• Language and ecosystem fit

• Test design and maintainability

• Ease of setup and developer experience

• Execution speed and reliability

• CI/CD integration

• Debugging and reporting

• Community and maintenance

• Scalability and infrastructure

• Cost (beyond license)

Conclusion

Protractor played a pivotal role in Angular’s testing story, offering framework-aware E2E testing when few options matched its capabilities. Although it has been deprecated, many teams still maintain legacy suites and need a careful, low-risk migration path. Fortunately, the open source ecosystem now provides a range of options—some focused on web components and modern browser automation, others aimed at mobile, desktop, or game UIs.

• If you want modern, fast, and reliable web testing with rich diagnostics, consider complementing or replacing E2E with component-focused approaches and newer browser automation stacks.

• If your product mix spans web, mobile, and desktop, it may be time to distribute automation across specialized tools that excel on each platform.

• If collaboration and living documentation are your priorities, frameworks that integrate acceptance criteria with test execution can improve alignment and quality outcomes.

Finally, think holistically: success depends as much on your test strategy and engineering practices as on the tool. Start with a thin, stable E2E layer for critical paths, lean on component or API tests for breadth, and invest in good reporting, CI/CD, and debugging to keep feedback fast and actionable.