NUnit vs TestNG
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
Free and open source
Open sourceFree and open source
Open sourceWhat drives the bill
The metric that actually scales your invoice.
Free and open source. You pay in engineering time and CI minutes.
Free and open source. You pay in engineering time and CI minutes.
Free tier
Everything, self-hosted
Everything, self-hosted
Open source
MIT
Apache-2.0
Self-hostable
No-code authoring
Languages
Platforms
Fits teams
Adoption
Widely used
.NET Foundation · since 2002
Widely used
TestNG Team · since 2004
Strengths
- The most expressive built-in assertion library in .NET.
- Familiar attribute model for teams migrating from older frameworks.
- Very stable, very long-lived.
- Mature parallel-execution and grouping model, ideal for large Selenium suites.
- Data providers make data-driven testing straightforward.
- Test dependencies and ordering, which JUnit deliberately avoids.
Limitations
- Shared test-class instances mean state can leak between tests unless you are careful.
- New Microsoft templates default to xUnit, so it is drifting from the mainstream.
- Attribute-heavy style feels dated.
- XML suite configuration is dated and error-prone.
- Test dependencies encourage ordering coupling that makes suites fragile.
- Community momentum favours JUnit 5 for new projects.
Best for
Existing .NET codebases already standardised on NUnit.
Java Selenium automation frameworks and large integration suites.
All of these integrate with: Jenkins.
Pricing last reviewed August 2026 and is indicative only — confirm on each vendor’s own page.