Smoke Testing Vs Sanity Testing: Which one is more reliable?

Rlogical Techsoft
4 min readMay 2, 2024
Smoke Testing Vs Sanity Testing

The approval on application deployment won’t be furnished until you perform thorough testing. In the error-prone application development process, the significance of testing is precious. It checks with attention to detail approaches and makes your application ready to launch.

Hence, the testing process is lengthy and demands skilled QA testers. Whether you want to make a website or mobile app, performing quality assurance (QA) testing is a critical factor. Front he various testing types, the most commonly talked about ones are Smoke testing and Sanity testing. Moreover, it even raised the confusion between the two. So, here’s presenting the article to address the concerns of the

What is Sanity Testing?

The testing method used to verify the features or components of the software is Sanity testing. It evaluates whether that particular function is working properly or not after the fixation. Moreover, it is majorly performed once changes are made related to bugs.

Sanity Testing gives an overview of the potency of new features in the existing applications. Hence, it validates the changes and manages them as per the requirement. It is a manual process that the QA team has to perform from their end. You can’t use any automation tool for Sanity testing. Yet it enhances the authenticity of the application. Get a better grip on Sanity testing with its pros and cons.

Advantages of Sanity Testing

  • The sanity testing is less expensive as it is processed manually by the QA team. So, it’s essential to hire experienced QA testers.
  • It examines the reasonability of the application while integrating new functionality.
  • Permits to tackle the deployment concerns and boost the quality and reliability of the software
  • As it’s a sort of regression testing, you will leverage it for the in-depth testing further

Limitations of Sanity Testing

  • Sanity testing is processed without any script or documentation, which leads to inadequate reference shortly for any query.
  • As the testing is performed manually by human resources, it will take too much time. Also, the accuracy level might be restricted depending on the expertise of the QA tester.

What is Smoke Testing?

The smoke testing is conducted in the initial stages of the software development. It is a testing technique used to determine the smooth functionality of the application. This testing ensures the viability of software by processing through written scripts or using an automation approach.

By performing the smoke testing you can oversee the faults or mistakes priorly. So, it will help to redefine the further development cycle. Smoke testing is focused on making software pass the user acceptance testing seamlessly. To explore smoke testing, let’s delve into the benefits and drawbacks of it.

Advantages of Smoke Testing

  • It gives time to detect bugs and errors at an early stage of development and modify the process accordingly.
  • It can be conducted by the developers to verify the stability of the software application.
  • Using automated tools, smoke testing has become quite time-saving and allows handling the quality aspects.
  • Smoke testing is better utilized to upgrade the performance and prevent the chances of software failure.

Related: Why are QA Testers Important for Your Software Development Project?

Limitations of Smoke Testing

  • The smoke testing lacks complete coverage of the quality checking for software
  • As the testing occurs only at the beginning steps of development, risks of quality issues arise at the later stages.

Now, it’s time to have the face-off between sanity testing and smoke testing.

Sanity Testing vs. Smoke Testing

  • The Sanity Test is majorly performed when you need to authenticate a specific function in existing software. While Smoke is for the very initial build check.
  • A smoke test is necessary to understand the vitality of the software and sanity work to retain the stability of the software solution
  • Selenium PhantomJS, Postman, and Cypress are used in the Smoke testing method. On the other hand, the sanity testing is conducted by the QA testers manually without any tools
  • Smoke testing is the first testing phase for any software. Hoover, sanity testing is processed on the live or already deployed software
  • Smoke covers the whole or end-to-end development stage testing while Sanity makes up for particularly new functions of software.
  • The smoke testing will be included in your development stages. However, you need to consult a QA tester individually to process the sanity testing. For example, if you outsource the project, it will gain the edge in outsourcing QA services. Because the development team also has testers.

The Bottom-line

No matter whether you are releasing your application or already have one performed, timely QA testing makes it more proficient. If you are a new startup, you can schedule a call with our experts to strategize the process. Along with that, you can hire dedicated QA testers on a part-time, full-time, or hourly basis. Our knowledgeable team will guide you with the right mechanism!

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Rlogical Techsoft

Web & Mobile App Development Company. Expertise in Mobile App, PHP, ASP .NET, MVC 5 (Razor), MongoDB, NodeJS, AngularJS, ReactJS, Windows App, POS, Scraping.