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

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

Unit testing, integration testing, and component 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

Vitest is a fast, modern JavaScript test runner built on Vite

It supports unit, integration, and component testing with a Jest-compatible API, built-in mocking, and TypeScript support. Designed for speed and efficiency. It seamlessly integrates with Vite projects but can also be used independently.

Yes

It has an XUnit reporter available which outputs an XUnit-compatible XML document, often applicable in CI servers.

No

Vitest does not natively follow the xUnit test structure, but it supports similar concepts. It uses a Jest-compatible API, meaning it provides test lifecycle hooks (beforeEach, afterEach, etc.) and assertions similar to xUnit-style frameworks. However, it does not strictly adhere to classical xUnit architecture, such as NUnit, JUnit, or MSTest.

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.

Yes

Vitest uses JSDOM to simulate a browser environment, making it easy to test DOM-related functionality. It has Browser Mode for running component tests in the browser. Vitest can run tests in real browsers via tools like Playwright or WebdriverIO.

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

Yes

Vitest supports server-side testing, allowing you to test Node.js and server-side logic such as APIs, databases, and backend functions. It provides native support for ESM, mocks, spies, and environment configurations.

Mocha provides the hooks before(), after(), beforeEach(), and afterEach() to set up preconditions and clean up after your tests

Yes

Vitest's Test Context, inspired by Playwright Fixtures, allows defining utils, states, and fixtures for use in tests. It enables sharing context between tests using the test.context object and supports tuple syntax for fixtures, allowing customization of fixture options per test.

N/A

Mocha allows grouping of fixtures

Yes

Vitest supports group fixtures by using describe blocks with beforeAll, beforeEach, afterEach, and afterAll hooks. These hooks allow setting up a shared state for a group of tests.

No

MIT License

MIT License

Provides Mocking capabilities through third party libraries like sinon.js, simple-mock and nock

Yes

Vitest has built-in support for mocks, allowing you to mock functions, modules, timers, and spies similar to Jest.

Yes

Grouping is supported and is accomplished by the using a nested 'describe()'

Yes

Vitest supports Grouping, allowing you to organize tests into groups using describe() blocks.

Vitest provides a watch mode for instant test re-runs, ESM-first architecture for modern development, parallel and concurrent test execution for speed, custom reporters for CI/CD integration, and fake timers for testing time-dependent code.