SimpleTest vs Behat comparison of testing frameworks
What are the differences between SimpleTest and Behat?

	SimpleTest https://github.com/simpletest/simpletest	Behat https://docs.behat.org/en/latest/
Programming language	PHP	PHP
Category	Unit Testing, Web Testing	Functional/Acceptance Testing
General info	SimpleTest is a unit test and web test framework for PHP It has JWebUnit style functionality and support for SSL, forms, frames, proxies and basic authentication	Behat is an open source Behavior-Driven Development framework for PHP. Behat uses the StoryBDD subtype of behaviour-driven development (the other subtype is SpecBDD); This means the tests we write with Behat look rather like stories than code. It is inspired by Ruby's Cucumber
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 With SimpleTest common but fiddly PHP tasks, such as logging into a site, can be tested easily	Yes To enable Behat to test a website, you need to add Mink and a browser emulator (selenium maybe, though slow) to the mix. Mink methods are the connector between Behat and an extensive list of available drivers, and they provide a consistent testing API.
Server-side Allows testing the bahovior of a server-side code	Yes Server-side behaviour can be tested by writing simple unit tests to test functionality and behaviour of single components.	Yes Behat can be used for Data Integrity Testing to verify that database operations are functioning properly
Fixtures Allows defining a fixed, specific states of data (fixtures) that are test-local. This ensures specific environment for a single test	Yes It can import fixtures using a mixin like 'given()' method	Yes One can use the 'Doctrinefixturesbundle' to create the required fixture loaders and load them in our Behat scenarios when required, using the 'BeforeScenario' hook.
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 It allows grouping of fixtures	Yes Behat allows for group 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.	Yes Simpletest has support for generators	By use of third party libraries like moodle-behat-generators
Licence Licence type governing the use and redistribution of the software	GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1	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)	Yes It allows for one to build Mock objects.To create a mock version of a class we need to include the mock object library and run the generator. This will create a clone class which we use to create new instances(objects) in our test cases.	By using third party libraries like Mock and Prophecy
Grouping Allows organizing tests in groups	Yes There are several ways of grouping tests; one is to simply place multiple test cases into a single file, another is to mark any base test cases that should not be run as abstract, Simpletest gives you a couple of options	Yes You can use tags to group features and scenarios together, independent of your file and directory structure
Other Other useful information about the testing framework