The best Percy alternatives, compared honestly
Percy, part of BrowserStack since 2020, bills per screenshot: every page or component, in every browser, at every width. A suite of 200 pages in 3 browsers at 2 widths is 1,200 screenshots per build, so the free 5,000 a month runs out in a handful of builds and the paid Desktop plan starts at $199/mo billed annually. Teams also look elsewhere when their UI lives in Storybook, or when they would rather keep screenshots inside the CI they already run.
The best Percy alternative depends on volume and stack:
- Lowest hosted bill at 25,000 screenshots/mo → Argos Pro, $100/mo for 35,000, against $449/mo billed annually on Percy.
- Storybook component libraries → Chromatic: Free 5,000 snapshots (Chrome only), Starter $179/mo for 35,000.
- AI diffing at enterprise scale → Applitools Eyes: Starter $667/mo billed annually, no free plan.
- No vendor at all → Playwright
toHaveScreenshot()or BackstopJS: $0 licence, you own baselines and review.
Cost at two volumes
What 5,000 and 25,000 screenshots a month cost
Each vendor counts something slightly different, so the first column says what one billed unit is. The two right-hand columns are the cheapest published plan that covers that monthly volume.
| Tool | What is billed | Free allowance | First paid plan | 5,000 units/mo | 25,000 units/mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Percy | Screenshot: one page or component × browser × width | 5,000/mo, unlimited users and projects | Desktop: $199/mo billed annually ($249 billed monthly) for 10,000; extra $0.036 each | $0 (Free plan) | $449/mo billed annually, or $549/mo billed monthly (25,000 tier) |
| Chromatic | Billed snapshot: test × browser × mode; TurboSnap copies count 0.2 | 5,000/mo, Chrome only; testing pauses at the limit | Starter: $179/mo for 35,000, adds Safari, Firefox, Edge; extra $0.008 each | $0 on Chrome only; $179/mo for other browsers | $179/mo (Starter) |
| Applitools Eyes | Checkpoint: one page or component check | ✗ free trial only | Starter: $667/mo billed annually for 100,000 component or 1,000 page checkpoints (period not stated) | Components: $667/mo billed annually. Pages: above Starter, Professional is contact sales | Components: $667/mo billed annually. Pages: contact sales |
| Argos | Screenshot: each uploaded capture (any file counts as one) | 5,000/mo on Hobby, one user; uploads pause at the limit | Pro: from $100/mo, billed monthly on usage, for 35,000; extra $0.004 ($0.0015 Storybook) | $0 solo (Hobby); $100/mo for team review (Pro) | $100/mo (Pro) |
| Playwright | Nothing: your CI time plus baseline images in your repo | Unlimited (Apache-2.0) | none | $0 licence | $0 licence |
| BackstopJS | Nothing: your CI time plus reference images in your repo | Unlimited (MIT) | none | $0 licence | $0 licence |
Formula: cost = plan price when monthly usage fits the included units, otherwise plan price + (usage − included) × the extra-unit rate. Every hosted plan above covers 5,000 and 25,000 without extra units. On Percy, the 10,000 tier plus overage would be $199 + 15,000 × $0.036 = $739/mo, so the 25,000 tier at $449 is the cheaper route. Assumes one unit = one rendered image and no TurboSnap savings; Applitools checkpoints are not the same unit (its Professional plan allows unlimited browsers per check). List prices in USD, excluding tax.
Sources, checked 2026-11-02: Percy pricing · Percy plans and billing · Chromatic pricing · Chromatic billing · Applitools pricing · Argos pricing · Playwright · BackstopJS
The shortlist
5 Percy alternatives, by the job they do best
Built by the Storybook team. Snapshots every story; TurboSnap bills unchanged stories at 0.2 of a snapshot. Free 5,000 snapshots on Chrome; Starter $179/mo for 35,000 with Safari, Firefox and Edge. Also runs Playwright and Cypress tests, but no Selenium SDK.
Visual AI designed to skip rendering noise, checking across large browser and device matrices, with SDKs for Selenium, Playwright, Cypress and Storybook. Starter is $667/mo billed annually; there is no free plan, and larger page volumes go through sales.
Open-source, PR-native screenshot review with per-screenshot rates on the page: Hobby free for 5,000 (one user), Pro from $100/mo for 35,000. Screenshots come from the browsers your own CI runs; no hosted cross-browser rendering.
If you already run Playwright, toHaveScreenshot() adds visual assertions with no extra vendor. Baselines live in your repo and should be generated in the same environment as CI, since rendering differs between hosts.
MIT-licensed, config-driven visual regression on Puppeteer or Playwright with an HTML diff report. Free; you run and maintain it. The repo is still active, but the last npm release is 6.3.25 from September 2024.
Stack fit
Which alternative works with your test runner
Percy ships SDKs for all four common runners, so check that the replacement covers yours. Package names and latest versions from the npm registry on 2026-11-02.
| Tool | Playwright | Cypress | Storybook | Selenium | Also |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Percy | ✓ @percy/playwright 1.1.2 | ✓ @percy/cypress 3.1.9 | ✓ @percy/storybook 10.0.4 | ✓ @percy/selenium-webdriver 2.2.8 | Native mobile apps via App Percy |
| Chromatic | ✓ @chromatic-com/playwright 1.0.0 | ✓ @chromatic-com/cypress 1.0.0 | ✓ native | ✗ not listed | Vitest, React Native |
| Applitools Eyes | ✓ TS, Java, C#, Python | ✓ @applitools/eyes-cypress | ✓ @applitools/eyes-storybook | ✓ Java, C#, JS, Python | Figma designs, native mobile, PDF |
| Argos | ✓ @argos-ci/playwright 7.8.0 | ✓ @argos-ci/cypress 7.4.0 | ✓ @argos-ci/storybook 6.4.4 | ✗ WebdriverIO SDK instead | Vitest, Puppeteer, WebdriverIO |
| Playwright | ✓ built in (1.64.1) | ✗ | ✗ not built in | ✗ | Chromium, Firefox, WebKit |
| BackstopJS | engine option | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | Puppeteer (default engine), URL scenarios in JSON config |
Sources, checked 2026-11-02: Percy docs · Chromatic docs index · Applitools SDKs · Argos docs index · Playwright snapshots · BackstopJS README
Head to head
Percy vs the popular picks
Method
How we checked
On 2026-11-02 we fetched each vendor's own pricing page; BrowserStack's was requested with a US country cookie and its prices read from the plan data embedded in the page, which matched the visible Desktop card. How units are counted comes from Chromatic's billing docs, Percy's plans-and-billing doc and the Argos pricing FAQ. SDK support comes from each vendor's docs index plus the npm registry for current versions. Prices are list prices without tax, promotions or negotiated discounts; tiers marked contact sales are shown as such, not estimated.
Common questions
Percy alternatives: common questions
How much does Percy cost?
Percy has a free plan with 5,000 screenshots a month, unlimited users and unlimited projects. The paid Desktop plan is $199/mo billed annually ($249 billed monthly) for 10,000 screenshots, or $449/mo billed annually ($549 billed monthly) for 25,000; each extra screenshot is $0.036. Desktop & Mobile starts at $599/mo billed annually for 25,000. A screenshot is one page or component in one browser at one width, so two pages in two browsers at three widths count as 12. Prices as listed on BrowserStack's pricing page on 2026-11-02.
What is the best free Percy alternative?
If you want no vendor at all, Playwright's built-in toHaveScreenshot() and BackstopJS are free and open source; you keep baselines and approvals in your own repo and CI. For a hosted free tier, Chromatic Free gives 5,000 snapshots a month (Chrome only, testing pauses at the limit) and Argos Hobby gives 5,000 screenshots a month for one person, including commercial use. Applitools offers a free trial, not a free plan.
Percy vs Chromatic: which should I pick?
Chromatic is built by the Storybook team: it snapshots every story and its TurboSnap feature bills unchanged stories at 0.2 of a snapshot, so it fits best when your UI lives in Storybook. Its Starter plan is $179/mo for 35,000 snapshots. Percy is framework-agnostic and also covers Selenium suites, which Chromatic does not list. See the full Percy vs Chromatic breakdown.
When is Percy still the right choice?
Stay on Percy if you already pay BrowserStack and want visual testing on the same account, if your suite runs on Selenium (Percy ships a Selenium SDK; Chromatic and Argos list none), or if you need native mobile app screenshots too, which BrowserStack sells as App Percy. The free plan's 5,000 screenshots a month with unlimited users is also generous for a small team.
Is Percy being shut down?
No. Percy is an active BrowserStack product: the @percy/cli package shipped version 1.32.12 on 2026-10-21, and the Playwright, Cypress, Storybook and Selenium SDKs all had releases in 2026.
How hard is it to migrate off Percy?
Percy snapshots are taken by its SDK inside your tests, so moving to another hosted tool means swapping the SDK call and the percy exec wrapper, then accepting fresh baselines on the first run; Argos publishes a step-by-step Percy migration guide. Moving to Playwright's toHaveScreenshot() or BackstopJS means you also take over storing baselines and reviewing diffs, since there is no hosted review UI.