vs Chromatic
Chromatic is a hosted testing platform. Claims about Chromatic come from its documentation and its pricing page, checked on 2026-11-03.
What it is
Section titled “What it is”The documentation calls Chromatic a testing platform for visual, interaction and accessibility tests, made by the team behind Storybook. It renders your UI in cloud browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Edge), runs tests in parallel, and lets you assign reviewers and resolve discussions. It works with Storybook, Playwright, Cypress, Vitest and React Native. Its TurboSnap feature snapshots only the stories affected by a change.
Features
Section titled “Features”| Feature | Chromatic | This project |
|---|---|---|
| Where it runs | Cloud browsers | Your machine or CI, in the browser provider you configure |
| Browsers | Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge | Those of your provider (Playwright and WebdriverIO) |
| Hosted review and sign-off | Yes | No, review the files and the Vis panel |
| Only test what changed | TurboSnap | No |
| Flake handling | SteadySnap | Not provided |
| Storybook globals (themes, viewports) | Yes | Per-theme and per-viewport snapshots |
| Baselines | Not stated on the documentation page | Local files in your repository |
| Cost | Free plan with 5,000 billed snapshots a month; Starter $179 a month | Open source |
Pricing is as listed on 2026-11-03 and may change. Free includes Chrome only; Safari, Firefox and Edge start at Starter. Sources for this project: platforms and CI.
What Chromatic does better
Section titled “What Chromatic does better”- Review is built for teams: reviewers, discussions and approvals live in the service.
- It runs the same tests in several browsers without you managing them.
- It reduces the number of snapshots with TurboSnap.
- It also covers interaction and accessibility tests.
What this project does better
Section titled “What this project does better”- It costs nothing and has no snapshot quota.
- Baselines and results are files in your repository.
- It runs in any CI that can run your tests.
- It has an agent review skill.
When to choose Chromatic
Section titled “When to choose Chromatic”Choose it when you want cross-browser results and team review without running infrastructure, and the cost fits.
When to choose this project
Section titled “When to choose this project”Choose it when you want local, free, file-based baselines in your own CI.
Migrate
Section titled “Migrate”Chromatic stores its baselines in its service, so there is nothing to copy. Add the addon or plugin, create baselines on the first run, and remove the Chromatic step from CI when you are ready. You can run both while you compare the results.