I use Selenium (via the Python bindings) for automated browser testing. My current project needs to run as fast as possible, so I compared the executions speed of a small test script in various browsers, both directly via WebDriver and through local Selenium Server. Elements are selected by name, CSS path, and XPath. The is also some direct JavaScript execution to get around quirks in the application under test.
Test execution time (average of five runs):
| Browser | Interface | Time (sec) |
|---|---|---|
| Firefox | WebDriver | 9.22 |
| Firefox | Server | 5.58 |
| Chrome | WebDriver | 5.35 |
| Chrome | Server | 6.55 |
| HTMLUnit1 | Server | 3.07 |
[1] JavaScript enabled (emulates Firefox 3.6)
Test environment
Intel Core2Quad Q8400
Ubuntu 11.04 amd64, Linux 2.6.38
Sun JRE 1.6.0_26-b03
Selenium Server 2.16.1
Selenium Python bindings 2.15