Top 10 Test Automation Trends for 2025 (& Beyond)

Test automation is becoming more and more important in this fast paced world of software development. With the rise of application features and business-process complexities, automation testing has to keep up with the pace. There has been new trends in automation testing that tackles this ever-increasing demand. In this blog post, let us look at top 10 test automation trends that we will possibly see in 2025 and beyond.

1. HyperAutomation

It is the process of using AI, Machine Learning, LLM, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to automate complex operational tasks. Hyperautomation is used at an enterprise-level scale and not for specific tasks or processes. Basically, hyperautomation can be used in situations where there is a lot of repetitive tasks, which would save a lot of efforts for the QA. Companies are increasingly leveraging the use of hyperautomation tools like RPA bots and AI and the trend seems to be rising constantly.

Following are the list of tools and technologies used across industries to achieve hyperautomation:

1. RPA Tools – UiPath, Automation Anywhere & Blueprism.
2. AI & ML – IBM Watson and Google AI.
3. BPM Platforms – Appian and Pega Systems.
4. Process Mining – Celonis and UiPath.
5. Intelligent Document Processing – ABBYY & Kofax.
6. Orchestration tools – ServiceNow & Zapier

2. Mobile Automation

With the constant increase in the use of mobile phones and mobile apps, it has become important to ensure proper automation testing of mobile apps across Android and IOS Devices. Apps are becoming increasingly complex with more features and capabilities year-on-year. Each year, new devices are sold in the market with different screen sizes, performance, OS versions etc. and hence it becomes crucial to test apps for such devices.

Tools like Appium, Selendroid and Robotium will see a sharp rising trend at top IT companies for automation testing of mobile applications. These are next-generation tools with excellent features that tackles all the needs of automation required for modern mobile apps. Certain online cloud platforms like Lambdatest and Saucelabs are already providing incredible support for automated app testing.

3. Self-Healing Tests

Self healing basically means that whenever there is a change in the application during its development cycle, the automation test scripts have the ability to self-heal and adjust the code according to the changes done as part of the development. This reduces the manual effort of the QA needing to open the test code and change it again and again as per the changes made by the development team.

Self healing uses AI and machine learning to identify parts of the test scripts which have broken elements or new locators automatically. This helps to reduce the maintenance efforts, improves the stability of the test code and aids in a smooth CI/CD process. There are various tools in the market like Testim, Katalon Studio and Selenium with AI plugins. This is a growing trend in the field of software testing and will likely to be keep growing even beyond 2025, with more features and capabilities coming in.

4. Testing on Real Cloud Devices

While testing any application, it is important to test it across various devices and configurations. While emulators and simulators do provide that opportunity, they do not really help in testing it from a “real-world” perspective. Testing on Real devices ensures that the application will function correctly as per the hardware and the software configurations of a real device.

Cloud testing service providers like Browserstack and Lambdatest provide excellent options to test your application over a variety of real devices ranging from android to IOS across multiple models and OS versions. Nowadays it has become increasingly challenging to setup a lab at client offices with dedicated devices for testing purpose, hence these cloud platforms serve an excellent alternative to test apps on real devices.

5. Shift-Left Test Automation

This is also one of the most important software testing trend that we are seeing in 2024 and would probably keep seeing even beyond 2025. Shift left testing in automation allows the QA Testers to write and execute automated test scripts when the application is in the pre-production or SIT phase. This helps in finding defects early in the software development life cycle. In automation, shift-left testing can be adopted easily via the use of CI/CD Pipelines.

6. Microservices Test Automation

In case of new-generation applications and software, it is evident that the software is being created in a modularized and distributed fashion. In such cases, creating GUI automation test scripts takes time as the QA has to wait for all the distributed modules to be integrated perfectly. This causes a waste of bandwidth. In order to tackle this issue, test automation of microservices is becoming more and more common. Scripts can be written which can validate the individual modules for their respective functionalities or business capabilities. This will also allow automation testers to find defects early and save time and cost before the integrations have been established fully.

7. AI in Automation

Artificial Intelligence can be used to enable smarter and more efficient testing process. AI can help with various automation activities like test script generation, predictive analytics to predict potential failures and prioritize test cases according to risk, help with finding faults in UI of application, efficient bug detection etc. AI can also help with maintenance of test scripts according to the changes made by the developers in the code. This saves a huge amount of time for the QA, giving them the liberty to focus on more functional aspects of testing. Furthermore, if we involve context-aware AI into our automation testing process, it can help QA to generate more relevant test scripts based on the context and semantics of the application.

There are a huge number of AI-powered test automation tools in the market that QA can use to achieve AI-driven test automation like Applitools, Functionize, Saucelabs, Tricentis Tosca, Perfecto etc.

8. Automated Visual Testing

Visual testing is one of the most important type of testing for any end-user facing application. It focuses on validating the appearance of the app on various devices or browsers to test if it looks the same across all of them. Visual testing helps catch unexpected bugs and specially plays a very major role in a fast – paced software development process where new features are pushed constantly.

Visual testing leverages the use of CI/CD pipelines for continuous and effortless automation that captures the screenshot of application across various browsers and devices to detect any visual discrepancies. Popular tools such as Applitools, Percy, Browserstack, LambdaTest & Testplane can be used to achieve visual testing.

9. Codeless Automation

Codeless automation refers to the process of creating automation scripts for an application, without writing a single line of code. Popular codeless automation tools provide a user interface that can be used to record tests that interact with the elements of the application and simulate a real world scenario. One major benefit is that these tools can be used by non-technical folks as well.

Codeless automation provides various advanced features like record & playback, drag and drop and integration with AI and ML. Various codeless automation testing tools are available in the market like UiPath, TestComplete, TestRigor etc.

10. DevSecOps Test Automation

Security is a very crucial part of software development life cycle. Including security practices like code analysis, compliance checks and vulnerability scanning has become very important due to the rise of cyber crimes in the world. The whole idea of DevSecOps is to make sure that security testing is involved at every stage of SDLC. It is about shifting security to the left – catching and fixing security issues early in the SDLC.

Various checks can be done via automation to eliminate security vulnerabilities like SQL injection, cross-site scripting every time a code is committed to the branch. These checks can be done as part of test automation continuously, by leveraging the use of CI/CD pipelines.

So these were the top 10 automation testing trends that are creating a significant impact on the software development space. By using these trends, organizations can stay ahead of the curve and deliver quality software to their customers. The growing complexity of software applications is pushing the boundaries of test automation.