QA Outsourcing Cost Guide 2025: Playwright, Cypress, Selenium

Why costs vary so much

Automation costs swing based on framework choice, runtime efficiency, and maintenance. Playwright and Cypress often deliver lower flake and maintenance costs than legacy Selenium when suites are designed well.

Core cost buckets

• Build: Framework setup, patterns, and pipelines
• Run: CI minutes, parallelization, and test selection
• Fix: Flake stabilization and selector maintenance
• Expand: New coverage and data/env work

Benchmarks (weekly suites)

• Playwright: $3.5k–$5.5k/mo infra at medium scale, low flake with auto-waits
• Cypress: $4k–$6k/mo with Dashboard parallelization; great DX, JS-only
• Selenium: $5k–$8k/mo infra + higher maint if selectors are brittle

Hidden costs to model

1. Flake tax: every 1% flake adds hours of reruns and triage
2. Data/env drift: stale fixtures and test data collisions
3. Slow regressions: >45m suites delay releases and pile up risk

How to budget

Model people + infra + maintenance. Aim for <30m regression with parallelism and smart test selection. Track change-fail rate, flake rate, and coverage as leading indicators.

Engagement models

• Pilot (2–4 weeks): Spike frameworks, deliver 1–2 flows, prove runtime/flake targets
• Build (6–10 weeks): Stand up CI pipelines, data strategy, and core suite
• Run (retainer): Expand coverage, keep flake <2%, tune infra cost

Tip: fix flake and data before expanding coverage—speed and trust beat raw test count.