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Kotest vs SpecFlow comparison of testing frameworks
What are the differences between Kotest and SpecFlow?

Kotest

https://github.com/kotest/kotest

SpecFlow

https://specflow.org/
Programming language

Kotlin

.NET

Category

Unit Testing

Acceptance Testing

General info

kotest is a powerful, elegant and flexible test framework for Kotlin, formerly known as kotlintest

Kotest has excellent support for data driven testing or table driven testing where it has the ability to quickly rerun the same test over and over with a predefined set of inputs and expected values

SpecFlow is a test automation solution for .NET

SpecFlow is a test automation solution for .NET which follows the BDD paradigm, and is part of the Cucumber family. SpecFlow tests are written with Gherkin, using the official Gherkin parser which allows you to write test cases using natural languages and supports over 70 languages.
xUnit
Set of frameworks originating from SUnit (Smalltalk's testing framework). They share similar structure and functionality.

No

No

Client-side
Allows testing code execution on the client, such as a web browser

Yes

You can test front-end components with kotest

Yes

Front-end behaviour is tested. With specflow specifications of the expected behaviours are made and specflow tests against this
Server-side
Allows testing the bahovior of a server-side code

Yes

Yes, you can test back-end components with kotest

Yes

Back-end behaviour is tested. Specifications of the expected behaviours are made and specflow tests against them
Fixtures
Allows defining a fixed, specific states of data (fixtures) that are test-local. This ensures specific environment for a single test

Yes

kotest contains fixtures, that is the setup / teardown functions

Yes

BeforeTestRun and AfterTestRun are executed once for each thread which is a limitation of the current architecture.
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

kotest has group fixtures available

N/A

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

Yes

SpecFlow contains a generator component. The SpecFlow IDE integration tries to locate the generator component in your project structure, in order to use the generator version matching the SpecFlow runtime in your project
Licence
Licence type governing the use and redistribution of the software

Apache License 2.0

BSD 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)

Yes

You can use a third party library like mockk to create mocks

Yes

Specflow intergrates well with mock to give it excellent mocking capabilities
Grouping
Allows organizing tests in groups

Yes

You can create test suites with kotest

Yes

You can create test suites with specflow
Other
Other useful information about the testing framework