Applitools Eyes vs Argos
Feature checklists rarely decide anything. What decides it is the pricing metric, who has to write the tests, and which limitation you can live with.
Entry price
Quote on request
Quote onlyFrom $100 per month (Pro, usage-based, 35k screenshots included)
Free tierWhat drives the bill
The metric that actually scales your invoice.
Quote-based enterprise pricing by checkpoints. Typically the most expensive option in the category.
Pro is usage-based from $100/month including 35,000 screenshots, with extras at $0.004 each ($0.0015 for Storybook). SSO is a paid add-on: $50/month for GitHub, $200/month for SAML.
Free tier
Free tier for individual developers with a monthly checkpoint allowance.
Hobby plan is free forever with up to 5,000 screenshots; free for open-source projects.
Open source
MIT
Self-hostable
No-code authoring
Languages
Platforms
Fits teams
Adoption
Widely used
Applitools · since 2013
Emerging
Argos · since 2017
Strengths
- The lowest false-positive rate in the category — the reason teams migrate to it from pixel-diff tools.
- Ultrafast Grid replaces a lot of cross-browser execution with one render pass.
- Root-cause analysis points at the DOM/CSS change behind a visual diff.
- Clean, fast PR review experience.
- Genuinely affordable, with a workable free tier.
- Open source, so self-hosting is a real fallback.
Limitations
- Expensive, and priced opaquely.
- Substantial platform to learn beyond simple snapshot comparison.
- Overkill if you have twenty pages and a stable design.
- Fewer integrations than Percy or Applitools.
- Small team behind it.
- Limited cross-browser rendering options.
Best for
Enterprises where visual correctness across many browsers is a business requirement.
Small and mid-sized teams wanting visual review in PRs at a sane price.
All of these integrate with: Cypress, Playwright, Storybook, GitHub.
Pricing last reviewed August 2026 and is indicative only — confirm on each vendor’s own page.