What Applitools is
Applitools is a visual testing company best known for Visual AI, a computer-vision engine that compares what each screen renders with an approved baseline and filters out harmless rendering noise. As of September 2026, its home page leads with "Deterministic AI End-to-end Testing" and describes two main products:
- Applitools Eyes adds visual checks to the tests you already have. SDKs plug into Playwright, Cypress, Selenium, WebdriverIO, Appium and Storybook, and the Ultrafast Grid renders each page across more than 100 browser, viewport and device combinations, including Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge, iOS and Android (Eyes). It also checks colour contrast, font sizes and overlapping layout against WCAG.
- Applitools Autonomous builds tests without code. It crawls your sitemap to create a starter suite, records flows, and turns plain-English steps into tests that mix visual, functional, API and PDF checks (Autonomous).
Failures point to the DOM element or CSS rule behind a difference, and one click updates every baseline an intended change affects. Applitools says its products are ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II compliant, and its news page lists a release of Visual AI guardrails for agentic coding on 15 September 2026. Private equity firm Thoma Bravo completed a growth investment in Applitools in May 2021.
Why teams look for an Applitools alternative
Most reasons to look for an Applitools alternative have little to do with its Visual AI. They come from a different question: not "does this screen still look right?" but "does this release do what it should?"
- A baseline shows what changed, not what is right. Visual AI compares each screen with an approved baseline or, through the Figma integration, a design. A wrong discount, a skipped consent step or a broken business rule can look perfectly normal on screen.
- Visual quality is one area of many. Business rules, API contracts, data integrity, access control and performance need different checks. Autonomous adds functional and API steps, but your team still decides what to test and maintains it.
- Baselines need owners. Every intended design change means new baselines to approve. Grouping makes that quick, but someone still decides.
- Evidence for the release decision. Visual diffs serve engineers and designers. A product owner deciding whether to ship needs a plain record of what was checked, what failed, what is open and what was not covered.
Whether you are writing an Applitools review or shortlisting tools, ask what your release decision needs; for visual quality alone, Applitools may be enough.
Applitools vs ShipperAG at a glance
Applitools checks how your product looks against an approved reference; ShipperAG checks what each release does against your requirements. Here is how they compare as of September 2026.
| Aspect | Applitools | ShipperAG |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Developers, QA engineers and designers; no-code tests for manual testers | Product and engineering teams that need evidence to approve each release |
| Approach | Visual AI compares rendered screens with approved baselines; Autonomous adds functional, API and PDF steps | AI QA specialists check each release against your requirements, design system and business rules |
| Who writes and maintains tests | Your team, in code (Eyes) or plain English (Autonomous); people approve baselines | No suite to write: a coordinator picks the specialists each change needs, within your limits |
| What checks compare against | An approved baseline, or a Figma design | Your requirements, design tokens, business rules and API docs |
| Evidence and sign-off | Visual diffs with DOM and CSS root-cause detail; comments and approvals in a shared dashboard | Verified, Issue found, Needs input and Not covered, sealed in an evidence ledger, plus a shareable report for sign-off |
| Browsers and devices | Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge, iOS and Android; real devices as an Enterprise add-on | Chromium only, with phone and tablet sizes by emulation. Firefox, Safari and real devices are not covered |
| Pricing model (as published) | Starter: $667 a month, paid annually. Professional and Enterprise: on request | From $149 a month, after a free 45-day trial |
| Availability | Available now, with a 14-day free trial | Private pilot (waitlist) |
Want release evidence you can check alongside your Applitools coverage? Start with a free 45-day trial, no card.
Work email only. We keep your email, team size, plan choice and the page you joined from, only to contact you about the ShipperAG pilot. No spam.
Applitools pricing, as published
As of September 2026, the Applitools pricing page lists three plans, each with unlimited users:
- Starter: $667 a month, paid annually, for 100,000 component checkpoints or 1,000 page checkpoints, including Visual AI, the MCP server, Figma and Storybook integrations, cross-browser testing and accessibility testing.
- Professional: on request, sized by active pages and components. It adds AI-driven functional testing, natural-language authoring and codeless API testing.
- Enterprise: on request, adding a private cloud, single sign-on and custom SLAs, with real devices and on-premises deployment as add-ons.
The Applitools FAQ also mentions a fully featured 14-day free trial. If Applitools pricing is why you are looking elsewhere, ShipperAG starts at $149 a month for 20 release checks, after a free 45-day trial.
Where ShipperAG is different
As an Applitools alternative, ShipperAG starts from what your product is supposed to do: the requirements, design system or brand tokens, business rules and API docs you add. Here is how it works:
- Connect a preview or staging URL and add that context.
- The coordinator reads the change and picks the specialists it needs, within your limits.
- Specialists run real checks: a real Chromium browser, HTTP and API calls, automated accessibility rules, and visual comparison against your design tokens.
- The independent verifier re-runs every finding in a fresh session.
- Results are sealed in an evidence ledger, and a person signs off or shares the report with stakeholders.
Visual design is one of the AI QA specialists, alongside business rules, user journeys, accessibility, API contracts, security and performance, across 13 quality areas. Every item ends as Verified, Issue found, Needs input (the requirements were unclear, so it asks instead of guessing) or Not covered. The ledger is hash-chained, and a model's opinion alone never marks anything verified.
When Applitools is the better choice
Not every team needs an Applitools alternative. Applitools is simply the better tool when the job is visual quality at scale:
- Many browsers and devices. The Ultrafast Grid covers Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge, iOS and Android. ShipperAG checks in Chromium only, with phone and tablet sizes by emulation; Firefox, Safari and real devices are not covered.
- Existing test suites. Your engineers have Playwright, Cypress, Selenium or Appium tests and want visual checks added to them.
- Components, designs, apps and PDFs. You test Storybook components, compare builds with Figma designs, or check native mobile apps and PDF documents.
- Enterprise requirements now. You need stated ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II compliance, a private cloud, on-premises deployment or single sign-on.
- You need to start today. Applitools has a free trial and a published Starter price; ShipperAG is a private pilot.
The two can also work side by side: Applitools guards how every screen looks across browsers, while ShipperAG checks each release against your requirements, as we explain in agentic QA vs test automation.
What ShipperAG does not do
ShipperAG is new, and it is not right for every job:
- It is not generally available or self-serve. It is a private pilot with a waitlist: teams start with a free 45-day trial with up to 20 release checks, and paid plans start at $149 a month.
- It runs in Chromium only. Firefox and Safari (WebKit) rendering and real devices are not covered, and reports list them under Not covered. See browsers, engines and devices.
- It does not replace a cross-browser visual regression tool; the two can run side by side.
- It only tests targets you own or have written permission to test, inside the hosts you allow.
Other Applitools alternatives
For like-for-like visual testing, ShipperAG is not the closest Applitools alternative. Other visual testing tools include:
- Percy by BrowserStack compares screenshots with a baseline on every commit, uses a Visual Review Agent to highlight meaningful changes, and works with existing Storybook, Playwright or Selenium tests (Percy).
- Meticulous records sessions in development, staging and preview environments, then replays them on every pull request to show visual changes before merge. See our Meticulous alternative comparison.
For the wider field, read our guide to AI testing tools or browse all alternatives and comparisons.
Sources: Playwright, playwright.dev; Applitools home page, Eyes, Autonomous, cross-browser testing, Figma, pricing, FAQ and news; Thoma Bravo, Thoma Bravo Announces Completion of Strategic Growth Investment in Applitools (5 May 2021); Percy by BrowserStack product page. Competitor details change, so check their websites for the latest. Checked 20 September 2026.