Test automation TCO calculator

Direct answer

Real 3-year TCO is rarely the licence line. Engineer maintenance time often eats 40 to 70 percent of the total. This calculator adds infra, CI overages, and engineer hours to the vendor rate, applies an 8 percent annual vendor escalation, and shows the hidden-cost share so a CFO can see what is really being bought.

3-year model

Inputs

QA seats5

Tests per day2000

Parallel concurrency

Eng hours / week on tests12 h

Eng hourly rate85 USD

Vendor escalation /yr8 %

Pick up to 4

Tools to compare

3-year TCO result

Playwright

Year-1 licence

$0 / quote

Year-1 infra + CI

$8,400

Year-1 eng time

$66,300

Year-1 total

$74,700

3-year total (with escalation)

$224,100

Hidden-cost share

100%

non-licence portion of Year-1 total

- Open-source: includes ~$35/mo per concurrent runner slot of CI minutes / self-hosted infra.

3-year TCO result

Cypress

Year-1 licence

$3,600

Year-1 infra + CI

Year-1 eng time

$66,300

Year-1 total

$69,900

3-year total (with escalation)

$210,587

Hidden-cost share

95%

non-licence portion of Year-1 total

3-year TCO result

BrowserStack

Year-1 licence

$22,800

Year-1 infra + CI

Year-1 eng time

$53,040

Year-1 total

$75,840

3-year total (with escalation)

$233,138

Hidden-cost share

70%

non-licence portion of Year-1 total

3-year TCO result

mabl

Year-1 licence

$0 / quote

Year-1 infra + CI

Year-1 eng time

$39,780

Year-1 total

$39,780

3-year total (with escalation)

$119,340

Hidden-cost share

100%

non-licence portion of Year-1 total

- Vendor is quote-only. Licence shown as $0 because we do not infer a rate. Negotiate with vendor for a real quote.