Useful Testing Tools, Libraries and Frameworks For React Developers
Last Updated :
15 Jul, 2025
We all know the love of developers for the most popular library, React. It's easy to learn, and it's easy to build the user interface of any website using React. If you're building an application, no matter what, you should test your application before serving it to the user. If you are a front-end developer working on the React library, you might have some favorite tool or framework for testing your React application. A lot of developers use Jest, Enzyme, or some other popular tools and libraries to test the components of React applications. However, every tool or framework is not the same for everyone. There are tons of testing frameworks and tools available in the open-source ecosystem for testing purposes of React applications.

Whether you're doing unit testing, integration testing, or end-to-end testing, choosing the right toolset and framework for testing is the key factor in leveraging TDD in React. In this blog, let's talk about some popular React testing frameworks and libraries that a lot of people use in their day-to-day jobs.
What is React?
React is a JavaScript library used to build user interfaces for websites and web applications. It helps developers create fast, interactive, and dynamic websites. Instead of reloading the whole page every time something changes, React updates only the parts that need to be changed. This makes websites feel faster and more responsive.
React is mainly used for building the frontend or the visible part of a website. It makes building complex user interfaces easier by breaking them into smaller, reusable pieces called components. These components can be buttons, forms, or even entire sections of a webpage.
Useful React Testing Tools
1. Jest
Jest is the most popular testing framework, with more than 16M downloads a week. It is created and maintained by Facebook. The team uses it to test all the JavaScript codes including React applications. It is also adopted by Airbnb, Uber, Intuit, and other teams as well. Jest comes with its test runner and assertion functions. This framework is also good for beginners who want to try incredibly fast JavaScript codes.
- Very fast performance. Airbnb saw a decrease in the total test runtime from 12 minutes to only 4.5 minutes when they switched from Mocha to Jest.
- It conduct snapshot, parallelization, and async method tests.
- Mock your functions, including third-party node_module libraries
- Possible to manage tests with larger objects using live snapshots.
- Standard syntax with report guide.
- Compatible with React, VueJS, Angular and many projects.
2. Mocha
Mocha is another popular test framework for Javascript developers. It provides browser support for NodeJS programs, asynchronous tests, test coverage reports, and the use of any claims library. It provides full control over how to test your code, with which tools, while you can plug in and out most supporting libraries and tools in your chain. Jest is the popular framework but it has some issues like mocking is confusing so Mocha is the alternative option in this case.
- Runs on Node.js and provides support for asynchronous front-end and back-end testing
- Helps in error tracking.
- Combination of Mocha with Enzyme and Chai is popular for the assertion, mocking, etc. Enzyme + Mocha is a good combination to test web applications written in ReactJS.
3. Chai
Chai is a popular assertion and expectations library for node and for the browser that can be paired with any javascript testing framework. An assertion is a way to declare what to expect in a test. Mocha doesn't come with assertion library built-in so a lot of developers pick Chai with Mocha for testing React application. Some functionality like expect, should, and assert helps you to declare what to expect in a test. It can be used to make assertions for functions, but also components later on by using Enzyme.
4. Jasmine
Jasmine is a great BDD open-source framework and test runner for testing all kinds of javascript applications. It includes both the visibility test and the response test of the user interface on several devices with different resolutions. A lot of developers who are Angular CLI users love to use Jasmine for testing the application. Developers mostly combine it with Babel and Enzyme to test React application. You can read about helper util library which is a designated to test the React application. Below is some pro side of the jasmine framework.
- A document object model (DOM) is not required for Jasmine.
- Helpful in both the front and back end tests.
- Async function tests.
- Mocking requests.
- Custom equality checker assertion.
- Custom matcher assertion.
- Solid documents and community support.
Keep in mind that Jasmine doesn't support snapshot tests, code coverage tools, parallelization (requires third-party tools), and native DOM manipulation (requires a third-party tool).
5. Enzyme
Enzyme is a testing utility designed to help developers for testing the React component without any hassle. Enzyme is one of the most used frameworks developed and maintained by Airbnb. Developers combine it with other frameworks such as Jest, Chai, or Mocha to test the React application. The enzyme is only used to render components, access things, find elements, interacting with elements, and simulate events. Chai or Jest can be used to make the assertions for it. You can test the outputs of React components, abstracting the rendering of components.
- Use shallow rendering.
- Access business implementations of your components.
- Conduct full DOM rendering.
- Use react-hooks in shallow rendering, with some limitations.
6. Cypress IO
Cypress is a very fast end to end testing framework that enables you to write your tests without any additional testing framework. It allows you to run your tests in the real browser or command line. Along with testing your code in the real browser, you can also use browser development tools side by side. The framework comes with its control panel that gives you control over the status of your tests. Some pros and advantages of using Cypress are
- Time travel with snapshots
- Screenshots and videos
- Automatic waiting
- Control network traffic without touching your server to test edge cases
- Built-in parallelization and load balancing makes debugging easier.
- Nice API to interact with page components.
7. React-testing-library
React-testing-library is created by Kent C. Dodds and supported by a vast community of developers. It allows you te to test the component easily and simulates the user behavior in your tests. Similar to enzyme this library is a complete set of React DOM testing utilities focused on imitating actual user actions and workflows. Read the article Revisiting React Testing in 2019 to make a choice in between react-testing-library and Enzyme. You can do the following things with react-testing-library
- Query your elements within text, label, displayValue, role, and testId
- Fire any event
- Wait for an element to appear with wait
There are some limitations of this library as well as you cannot conduct shallow rendering and you can not access the internal business of your components, such as states.
8. Puppeteer
Puppeteer is not a javascript framework, it is a headless Chromium Node library that provides API to control Chrome or Chromium through the DevTools protocol. You can start chromium and, with the provided API, navigate between pages, get buttons, and click on them. Puppeteer runs on an actual browser and it allows you to write end-to-end tests with an API similar to the browser. You can do many more things with Puppeteer such as generating screenshots, generating pre-rendered content from SPAs, automating actions like form submissions, keyboard inputs, etc. You can combine Puppeteer with Jest to test your React application end to end.
- Easy automated UI test, form submission, and keyboard input
- Easy creation of screenshots and PDF files of web pages
- Support for testing Chrome extensions.
Puppeteer doesn't support a large number of extensions, but the future is bright and promising.
Conclusion
We can see that each testing library and framework has its advantage and drawbacks. Whether it's a unit test, integration test, or end to end test, choosing the right tool helps a lot in getting the best result. To test the React components combining the right testing framework (e.g. Jest etc) with the right assertion/manipulation libraries (e.g. Enzyme etc) matters a lot for creating a smooth and flexible workflow, that can adapt while you upgrade, extend and modify your code.
Similar Reads
React Tutorial React is a powerful JavaScript library for building fast, scalable front-end applications. Created by Facebook, it's known for its component-based structure, single-page applications (SPAs), and virtual DOM,enabling efficient UI updates and a seamless user experience.Note: The latest stable version
7 min read
React Fundamentals
React IntroductionReactJS is a component-based JavaScript library used to build dynamic and interactive user interfaces. It simplifies the creation of single-page applications (SPAs) with a focus on performance and maintainability.React.jsWhy Use React?Before React, web development faced issues like slow DOM updates
7 min read
React Environment SetupTo run any React application, we need to first setup a ReactJS Development Environment. In this article, we will show you a step-by-step guide to installing and configuring a working React development environment.Pre-requisite:We must have Nodejs installed on our PC. So, the very first step will be
3 min read
React JS ReactDOMReactDOM is a core React package that provides methods to interact with the Document Object Model, or DOM. This package allows developers to access and modify the DOM. It is a package in React that provides DOM-specific methods that can be used at the top level of a web app to enable an efficient wa
3 min read
React JSXJSX stands for JavaScript XML, and it is a special syntax used in React to simplify building user interfaces. JSX allows you to write HTML-like code directly inside JavaScript, enabling you to create UI components more efficiently. Although JSX looks like regular HTML, itâs actually a syntax extensi
5 min read
ReactJS Rendering ElementsIn this article we will learn about rendering elements in ReactJS, updating the rendered elements and will also discuss about how efficiently the elements are rendered.What are React Elements?React elements are the smallest building blocks of a React application. They are different from DOM elements
3 min read
React ListsReact Lists are used to display a collection of similar data items like an array of objects and menu items. It allows us to dynamically render the array elements and display repetitive data.Rendering List in ReactTo render a list in React, we will use the JavaScript array map() function. We will ite
5 min read
React FormsForms are an essential part of any application used for collecting user data, processing payments, or handling authentication. React Forms are the components used to collect and manage the user inputs. These components include the input elements like text field, check box, date input, dropdowns etc.
5 min read
ReactJS KeysA key serves as a unique identifier in React, helping to track which items in a list have changed, been updated, or removed. It is particularly useful when dynamically creating components or when users modify the list. In this article, we'll explore ReactJS keys, understand their importance, how the
5 min read
Components in React
React ComponentsIn React, React components are independent, reusable building blocks in a React application that define what gets displayed on the UI. They accept inputs called props and return React elements describing the UI.In this article, we will explore the basics of React components, props, state, and render
4 min read
ReactJS Functional ComponentsIn ReactJS, functional components are a core part of building user interfaces. They are simple, lightweight, and powerful tools for rendering UI and handling logic. Functional components can accept props as input and return JSX that describes what the component should render.What are Reactjs Functio
5 min read
React Class ComponentsClass components are ES6 classes that extend React.Component. They allow state management and lifecycle methods for complex UI logic.Used for stateful components before Hooks.Support lifecycle methods for mounting, updating, and unmounting.The render() method in React class components returns JSX el
4 min read
ReactJS Pure ComponentsReactJS Pure Components are similar to regular class components but with a key optimization. They skip re-renders when the props and state remain the same. While class components are still supported in React, it's generally recommended to use functional components with hooks in new code for better p
4 min read
ReactJS Container and Presentational Pattern in ComponentsIn this article we will categorise the react components in two types depending on the pattern in which they are written in application and will learn briefly about these two categories. We will also discuss about alternatives to this pattern. Presentational and Container ComponentsThe type of compon
2 min read
ReactJS PropTypesIn ReactJS PropTypes are the property that is mainly shared between the parent components to the child components. It is used to solve the type validation problem. Since in the latest version of the React 19, PropeTypes has been removed. What is ReactJS PropTypes?PropTypes is a tool in React that he
5 min read
React Lifecycle In React, the lifecycle refers to the various stages a component goes through. These stages allow developers to run specific code at key moments, such as when the component is created, updated, or removed. By understanding the React lifecycle, you can better manage resources, side effects, and perfo
7 min read
React Hooks
Routing in React
Advanced React Concepts
React Projects