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Lost Pixel vs Percy

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

From $100 per month (Startup; Business $250, Scale $670)

Free tier

Free tier available

Free tier

What drives the bill

The metric that actually scales your invoice.

The hosted tiers are still listed and priced by monthly screenshots, but the site carries a sunset banner — do not start here. The MIT-licensed runner still works self-hosted, though its repository is archived.

BrowserStack no longer publishes standalone Percy prices — its own /percy/pricing page is gone and Percy now appears bundled into wider BrowserStack packages (it is one of the products in Team Ultimate at $375/month billed annually) or priced by sales. Paid plans still include a fixed screenshot allowance with overage on top, so multiply pages x widths x browsers x commits before committing — this is where budgets are misjudged.

Free tier

Open-source runner is free and unlimited when self-hosted, and the hosted platform has a free tier.

5,000 screenshots a month, unlimited users and projects.

Open source

MIT (core)

Self-hostable

No-code authoring

Languages

JavaScriptTypeScript
JavaScriptTypeScriptPythonRubyJava

Platforms

Web
Web

Fits teams

Solo / side projectStartupScale-up / mid-market
StartupScale-up / mid-marketEnterprise

Adoption

Emerging

Lost Pixel · since 2022

Widely used

BrowserStack · since 2015

Strengths

  • The self-hosted runner keeps working and its baselines live in your repo, so a sunset does not strand your tests.
  • Works with Storybook and with plain page URLs.
  • Clean GitHub Actions integration.
  • Plugs into an existing suite with a few lines rather than requiring new tests.
  • Server-side rendering removes machine-to-machine screenshot inconsistency.
  • Good PR-based approval workflow that developers actually use.

Limitations

  • Being sunset: the team joined Figma in April 2026 and no shutdown date for the hosted platform has been published.
  • Fewer browser and device permutations than the incumbents.
  • Less sophisticated diffing than Applitools' visual AI.
  • Screenshot-based billing escalates faster than teams expect.
  • Dynamic content requires careful masking or you drown in false diffs.
  • Responsive widths are rendered, not truly executed in each browser, which occasionally hides real issues.

Best for

Existing users planning a move. Argos and Chromatic are the usual destinations.

Teams with an existing E2E or Storybook suite who want visual coverage without new tests.

All of these integrate with: Storybook, Playwright.

Pricing last reviewed August 2026 and is indicative only — confirm on each vendor’s own page.