Selenium vs RPA: Features, Pros and Cons

Before getting started with the difference between Selenium and RPA, let us first discuss automation and its needs.

What is Automation?

Automation is the process of performing an operation with minimal human efforts. This reduces the human error, time and effort needed for an operation to be performed.

Why do we need automation?

One of the main reasons for automation is Optimization. The automation process optimizes the time and effort required to complete the process.

There are multiple tools for automation available in the open world. Among them, let's discuss the two major automation tools, Selenium and RPA; their features, pros and cons.

What is Selenium?

Selenium is a testing framework that can be used to test web applications. It is widely used for testing, but it can also be used to automate the web-based tasks such as submitting a form. It eliminates manual testing which requires more time and effort.

Features of Selenium:

• It is used for testing web applications
• It is an open-source tool in which different types of programming languages are used for writing test cases
• Selenium is mainly used for functional testing and regression testing
• Selenium testing supports cross-browser. The same test script can be used to test in Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome or Safari, etc.,
• It is developer-friendly due to its programming language support
• Once the test cases are ready, it can be executed in any operating systems

Life Cycle of Selenium:

The life cycle of selenium is as follows:

1. Test Plan
2. Generating Basic Test Case
3. Enhancing test cases
4. Executing and Debugging
5. Analyze and Report

What is RPA?

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is the process of automating operations with the help of bots/digital workers. This can be used to automate not only browser applications but also other applications. RPA can be used to automate any repetitive tasks without the involvement of humans.

Features of RPA:

• It is used to automate business processes
• It can automate web, desktop and mobile applications
• It creates a bot/digital worker which interacts with the system like human
• This is the best option for any repetitive and mundane tasks in your organization
• It is widely used in calculations, banking and data extraction.
• The software bots mimics the human action and executes the process
• It reduces the effort needed for a process
• It reduces the errors and risk in the process
• These software bots perform human actions like filling forms, processing the reports, and transferring the files
• The data is highly protected

Life Cycle of RPA:

• Analysis
• Development of Bot
• Testing
• Deployment and Maintenance

Let's take a look at the few main factors in both RPA and Selenium

Factors	RPA	Selenium
Usage	Used to automate business processes.	Used to automate web applications
Programming	No specific programming language knowledge is needed.	Need a knowledge of running test cases in the particular programming
Platform	It is platform-independent. Can be used to automate mobile, desktop and web applications.	Can be used to automate only web applications.
Use Cases	Banking Calculations Data-Based Process Any repetitive process can be automated.	Performance Testing Functional Testing Integration Testing

We hope this summary has given you some thought in choosing the right automation tool. If you got any queries related to this topic, please feel free to contact us at [email protected]