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

Jest

https://jestjs.io

Mocha

https://mochajs.org
Programming language

JavaScript

JavaScript

Category

Unit Testing

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

General info

A Unit Testing framework focused on simplicity

This is a Unit test framwork especially designed for the React.JS, Babel, TypeScript, Node, React, Angular and Vue projects. It usually worked with Enzyme(Integration testing)

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

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 easily test methods, properties, UI element actions and other front-end functionalities

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

Back-end server behaviour also can be tested with Jest much in the same way as the front-end tests.

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

Fixtures are supported, Jest has many helper functions such as: BeforeEach and afterEach If you have some work you need to do repeatedly for many tests, beforeAll and afterAll if you only need to do setup once, at the beginning of a file.

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

Jest supports 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)

Jest uses a custom resolver for imports in your tests making it simple to mock any object outside of your test’s scope. You can use mocked imports with the rich Mock Functions API to spy on function calls with readable test syntax.

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

Yes

You can declare as many test suites as you want. Grouping of tests together is done using a describe block

Yes

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