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AVA vs Mocha comparison of testing frameworks
What are the differences between AVA and Mocha?

AVA

https://github.com/avajs/ava

Mocha

https://mochajs.org
Programming language

JavaScript

JavaScript

Category

Unit Testing, Intergration Testing

Unit Testing, Intergration Testing, End-to-End Testing

General info

Futuristic, new, fast and concurrent JavaScript test runner with simple test syntax

AVA is a test runner for Node.js with a concise API, detailed error output. JS is a single-threaded but Node.JS is a parallel due to it's async behaviour. Ava leverages that and it can run tests concurrently

Mocha is a widely used JavaScript test framework for Node.js

Mocha is a simple, flexible and the one of the widely adopted JS test framework. Mocha usually runs tests serially which enables the accurate reporting. Also it's useful for asynchronous testing, and provides various king of test reports. Spec is default test reporter for mocha, there are many test reports like Nyan, Dot matrix, Tap, Landing strip, List and Progress. Mocha is being used with many other test frameworks like Selenium WebDriver, Webdriver.io, wd and Cypress
xUnit
Set of frameworks originating from SUnit (Smalltalk's testing framework). They share similar structure and functionality.

No

However Ava supports the TAP format which allows us to use the tap-xunit reporter to produce xUnit (JUnit) XML

Yes

It has an XUnit reporter available which outputs an XUnit-compatible XML document, often applicable in CI servers.
Client-side
Allows testing code execution on the client, such as a web browser

Yes

You can write tests for the DOM with Ava, testing front-end components is easy with Ava

Yes

Mocha Runs in the browser and is used widely to test front-end components and functionality. It can test various DOM elements, front-end functions and so on.
Server-side
Allows testing the bahovior of a server-side code

Yes

Ava utilizes the async I/O nature of Node and runs concurrent tests on NodeJs applications' back-endsA node server can have its endpoints tested with Ava

Yes

Mocha provides convenient ways of testing the Node server.It works well with Chai (an assertion library) where it provides the environment for writing server-side tests while we write the tests with Chai
Fixtures
Allows defining a fixed, specific states of data (fixtures) that are test-local. This ensures specific environment for a single test

Yes

Using Ava's ava-fixture library it supports fixtures

Mocha provides the hooks before(), after(), beforeEach(), and afterEach() to set up preconditions and clean up after your tests
Group fixtures
Allows defining a fixed, specific states of data for a group of tests (group-fixtures). This ensures specific environment for a given group of tests.

Yes

Ava has support for group fixtures

N/A

Mocha allows grouping of fixtures
Generators
Supports data generators for tests. Data generators generate input data for test. The test is then run for each input data produced in this way.

N/A

Licence
Licence type governing the use and redistribution of the software

MIT License

MIT License

Mocks
Mocks are objects that simulate the behavior of real objects. Using mocks allows testing some part of the code in isolation (with other parts mocked when needed)

AVA has no mocking built in, to mock functions you can use third party libraries like Sinon.js.

Provides Mocking capabilities through third party libraries like sinon.js, simple-mock and nock
Grouping
Allows organizing tests in groups

No

There is no support for grouping tests

Yes

Grouping is supported and is accomplished by the using a nested 'describe()'
Other
Other useful information about the testing framework