Is RPA and Automation Testing tools are same?
No, We can't compare RPA with Automation Testing as it is not a testing tool. RPA is used to automate business process in any field or department like Finance, HR, Payroll, Banking , Mortgage. Both of them have the same goal to eliminate repetitive and boring tasks but they are completely different. Even the concept itself is different. In RPA we have already business process working and on production and I want to automate it, on the other hand, Automation Testing used to test applications and see all the defects before going to production.
Can I use RPA in Automation Testing?
Yes, RPA can do different types of testing, unit testing, functional testing, and Regression testing.
but there are 2 points we need to consider:
- We have a lot of amazing automation testing tools like Selenium, Katalon, UFT etc. They all specialized in automation testing and have very powerful features which is not supported by RPA because it is not designed to break a system to see defects, it designed to make a working system.
- Most automation testing tools are free but RPA tools all are Licensed hence we need to consider this for ROI. It is like buying the latest version of Mac laptop so I can open Facebook 😆.
In the end, if you are in an organization that already has RPA tool and is using it, so i'll suggest to try to use it in automation testing and see which is better for you and if you can please share with us your findings. But if your organization is new to RPA and you only want to use it just for automation testing so don't go with this approach.