Understand the true cost of E2E testing in-house

The hardest part of end-to-end testing isn’t building the tests, it’s investigating the failures, reproducing the bugs, and maintaining the tests. There’s only so much that a small team can handle.

Use these calculators to estimate the QA engineering budget you’ll need to hit 80% end-to-end test coverage, and run all those tests without slowing down your deployments.

Team & salaries

Developers on the team

Team size is a good indicator of your app’s testing footprint.

5
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QA engineer salary

$90,000/ year
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Number of SDETs

One can typically manage the testing infrastructure but everyone needs a vacation sometime.

-
+

SDET

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SDET salary

$120,000/ year
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Tests for 80% coverage
125 tests

Test creation & maintenance

Time to create each test

2 hours per test case on average.

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+

hours

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Time to investigate & fix a failed test

~1.5 hours on average.

1.5hrs / test
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Daily runs

You should run the suite at least daily, or more if you deploy continuously.

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 runs per day

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One-time test creation
250 hours
~31 business days
Tests to run
2,500 tests / mo
125 tests running 1 time(s) per day
Failed tests
188 tests / mo
Time to maintain tests
281 hours / mo

Cost of building an in-house QA team

Not including infrastructure costs.

QA team to hire
2 QAEs
0 SDET
Team salaries
$180,000/yr
Time on QA
For the 1st year
0 days/yr
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Expect to pay for setup and upkeep infrastructure costs for running your automated E2E tests.

Most teams run tests sequentially, which can take hours. Running tests in parallel is more ideal, yet non-trivial to set up.