head to head · open source
cypress vs selenium
cypress has 51,019 GitHub stars, 3,639 forks, 1,084 open issues and last shipped yesterday. selenium has 34,499 stars, 8,718 forks, 188 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cypress leads on adoption by 48% (51,019 vs 34,499 stars). cypress is written in TypeScript under MIT; selenium is written in Java under Apache-2.0. cypress has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, selenium 25%. cypress was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| cypress | selenium | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 51K | ★ 34K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.6K | ⑂ 8.7K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick cypress if
- You weight community size — 51K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick selenium if
- You want the selenium feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and selenium fits your workflow better
About cypress
Cypress is a fast, easy and reliable testing framework for anything that runs in a browser, distributed as an MIT licensed TypeScript project on npm and aimed at front end developers and QA engineers who need to test web applications.
read the full cypress overview →
About selenium
Selenium is a browser automation framework and ecosystem — an umbrella project providing infrastructure for the W3C WebDriver specification, a platform and language neutral coding interface for driving all major web browsers — aimed at developers and quality engineers who automate browser behaviour from Java, .NET, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, or Rust.
read the full selenium overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cypress or selenium more popular?
cypress has 51,019 GitHub stars and selenium has 34,499. cypress has the larger community by that measure.
Are cypress and selenium free?
Both are open source. cypress is licensed under MIT and selenium under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cypress and selenium?
cypress is written in TypeScript and selenium in Java. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, cypress or selenium?
Choose cypress if you want the larger community (51,019 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose selenium if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.