Aqua, the IDE for Test Automation, Reaches General Availability! | The Quality Assurance Blog (2024)

Testing

We want to say a special thank you to all early adopters for their trust, support, and valuable feedback, which enabled us to fix the most critical issues ahead of the general release.

As a token of our gratitude and commitment to fostering growth within the testing community, we’re offering a free license for individual, non-commercial use of Aqua. A commercial license is also available. As part of the launch, we’re offering a 50% discount on an annual subscription plan if you purchase before June 16th, 2024. Read on to learn more.

Get Aqua For Free

New licensing model

For Aqua, we are providing a new licensing model that consists of two plans:

• Free Individual Non-Commercial
• Paid Commercial

If you’ll be using Aqua for non-commercial purposes only, you won’t have to pay for your Aqua license. If you’re planning on using Aqua for commercial purposes, you can purchase a license as you normally would with any of our other products.

However, the difference is that for Aqua we’ve simplified the pricing into a single Commercial subscription. Regardless of whether you’re self-employed or work for a company, the Commercial subscription is the one you’ll need for commercial usage.

Commercial vs. non-commercial usage

As per our Subscription Agreement, any activity from which you, as a product user, obtain regular direct or indirect income would be classified as commercial usage. We’ve prepared a detailed FAQ covering multiple scenarios. As always, you’re welcome to reach out to sales@jetbrains.com with any questions you might have.

Currently, this new licensing model is purely based on an honor system in which you declare that you won’t be using it for commercial purposes. We hope this will work, but we might need to make some adjustments in the future, depending on the extent to which the honor system is adhered to.

It is also important to note that, if you’re using a non-commercial license, you cannot opt out of the collection of anonymous usage statistics. This is similar to our Early Access Program (EAP) and is in compliance with our Privacy Policy.

Why Aqua?

With those details out of the way, let’s see what our users say about Aqua and why you need this IDE if you’re a test automation engineer.

Application testing is a distinct discipline that requires a unique skill set. It makes sense that test engineers would benefit from working with an IDE tailored to their specific needs.

Aqua is the first IDE specifically designed for test automation. It’s a polyglot IDE supporting major languages used in test automation: Java, Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Kotlin, and SQL. The IDE also supports major frameworks used for software testing, like Selenium, Playwright, and Cypress.

Over the past months, we’ve received lots of user feedback, which we’re happy to share with you. Some of the feedback was collected via in-IDE surveys, while some of it was shared online across various public channels. We are immensely grateful for your contributions!

To help us make Aqua even better, consider joining the Aqua Adopters Group.

Curious about what test automation engineers like about Aqua? Read on!

The IDE for test automation

Since the launch of Aqua, we have received many positive reviews from the testing community highlighting the advantage of having a dedicated IDE for test automation.

“Aqua, an IDE for us!” reads one of the reviews. “Finally, a powerful IDE for test automation,” says another.

Other comments include “JetBrains Aqua is a game-changer in the world of test automation,” and “This is one of the greatest milestones from JetBrains for the QA community.”

Ready to use out of the box

Like every JetBrains IDE, Aqua comes equipped with a broad set of features that work out of the box. You can get straight to testing without having to install and configure lots of plugins.

Web Inspector, Aqua users’ most loved feature, works like an embedded browser. With Web Inspector, you can view web applications and generate unique CSS or XPath locators for the elements you select on the web page. What’s more, Aqua provides you with a list of alternative names.

All of this works inside the IDE, so there’s no need to constantly switch to Chrome DevTools!

I highly recommend using Aqua if you use Selenium, Cypress, and Playwright. This incredible IDE facilitates the generation of page locators and allows seamless validation within the IDE itself. There is no need to open Chrome DevTools or other inspectors. You can effortlessly write page objects using your preferred locator strategy, such as CSS or XPath, and validate them directly within Aqua against the webpage.

Naveen Khunteta, founder atNaveen Automation Labs.

“Honestly, this is a game-changer for finding locators,” says one of the Aqua reviews.

Besides Web Inspector, our users like a convenient test runner, user-friendly debugger, the HTTP Client for API testing, database support, integration for Docker, and version control systems. You can find detailed descriptions of our features on this page.

Simplifies complex tasks

Being a powerful JetBrains IDE, Aqua minimizes hassles for even the most challenging tasks. Intelligent code analysis combines with powerful search and refactoring capabilities, boosting your quality engineering productivity. And with the addition of JetBrains AI Assistant, your IDE is even more powerful, context-aware, and helpful.

That’s it for today! Please try Aqua and share your feedback and suggestions in the comments of this blog post, in our issue tracker, or on social media.

Thanks for reading, and happy testing!

Your Aqua team