Why Cypress Sucks for Real Test Automation? (Part 2: Limitations)

Many limitations of Cypress make it not suitable for serious test automation

Update: A related article “Why JavaScript Is Not a Suitable Language for Real Web Test Automation?” is now available. (2021–04–15)

Update: A related article “Cypress vs Selenium WebDriver Comparison by Example” is now available (2022–06–22)

I have received some positive feedback on my “Why Cypress Sucks for Real Test Automation” (Part 1) article. A few readers wanted to clarify it a bit more. Yes, the article was more focused on why there is really no need to use Cypress, as there is a much better tool (in almost every way) Selenium WebDriver. In this follow-up article, I will focus on the limitations of Cypress.

Table of Contents:
  ∘ 1. Technical limitations of Cypress
  ∘ 2. Cypress is actually slower
  ∘ 3. Cypress tests are hard to maintain
  ∘ 4. Cypress can only use Node.JS, which is not suitable for test automation
  ∘ 5. Cypress wrongly added “retry-ability”, which shall be a CT feature
  ∘ 6. Complex and Inconsistent Syntax
  ∘ 7. Not Future-Proof

1. Technical limitations of Cypress