Where to Run iOS Tests — List of Cloud Providers

Sergei Iartsev ·

One day your product grew up and you understood that running iOS tests locally is not a solution anymore. For those who love hardcore and are interested in setting up and maintaining infrastructure from beginning to end, we’ve previously provided a list of providers that offer Mac mini rentals. In most cases, configuring your own infrastructure and environment can be complicated and costly, so you’ll likely want to choose an option that’s more closely related to your end goal.

There are three types of cloud-based testing solutions:

  1. App testing infrastructure providers
  2. CI/CD platforms
  3. Real device providers

App testing infrastructure providers

Firebase Test Lab

Firebase Test Lab supports iOS testing with physical devices. Pricing is approximately $5/hr in real-world usage.

SauceLabs

SauceLabs is a great solution if you want to run tests for different products to test like mobile apps, desktop apps and websites in the same place. Real-world pricing comes to approximately $4.8/hr.

Marathon Cloud

Marathon Cloud is the most cutting-edge SaaS solution available in the market. It has a lot of features out of the box so all you need to do is upload your app and test app, while the platform takes care of the rest.

Advantages:

  • The platform features automated test distribution and retry strategies
  • It can complete thousands of UI tests within just 15 minutes

Disadvantages:

  • Only native tools are supported, such as XCTest and XCUITest

Prices, per hour:

  • Base: $2
  • Minimum: $1.36
  • Real-world: $2

CI/CD Platforms

Various CI/CD providers offer a range of pros and cons, so it’s crucial to explore them individually to find the best fit for your needs. Key factors to consider include pricing and features that assist with concurrency, test distribution, and retries.

If you don’t have a CI/CD platform yet, I would recommend looking at CircleCI because their pricing and built-in features support concurrent test execution out of the box.

Recommendation

Based on the pricing information above, it appears that if you have a small test suite, I would recommend running it on a CI/CD pipeline as it is easier to maintain. However, once your test suite grows to include 50+ UI tests, you will require retry mechanisms and a solution to run tests concurrently. While most platforms require you to do it manually, CircleCI and Marathon Cloud offer automated solutions for these tasks.