Chromatic Alternatives (2026): 8 Tools Compared on Price
Chromatic is made by the team behind Storybook, and for a component library that lives in Storybook it is hard to beat. This page is for teams weighing it against something else. Usually that’s for one of these reasons: the snapshot bill once browsers and viewports multiply, TurboSnap not working with Playwright or Cypress, the free plan being Chrome only, or needing to test a deployed website rather than code.
Which of those is driving you decides which tool to look at, so this page is organised that way. Every price below is from the vendor’s own pricing page or documentation, checked on 5 November 2026. Diffy is our product; we’ve tried to be as plain about where it loses as about where it wins.
Chromatic pricing in 2026
| Plan | Price | Billed snapshots a month | Browsers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 5,000 | Chrome |
| Starter | $179/month | 35,000 | Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge |
| Pro | $399/month | 85,000 | Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge |
Every plan has unlimited projects and collaborators. The pricing page lists extra snapshots at $0.008 on Starter. Pro adds a custom domain, and Enterprise adds SSO, priority support with an SLA, and unlimited accessibility usage.
Chromatic’s billing docs cover the rest:
- Counting: visual snapshots = tests × builds × browsers × modes. A mode is a viewport, theme or similar variant.
- Going over: on Free, review and testing pause once the 5,000 snapshots are used. On paid plans testing continues, and extra snapshots are charged at the end of the billing period.
- Billing: self-serve plans are monthly only. Annual payment means Enterprise.
- Retention: at least 12 months of builds and snapshots on every plan.
TurboSnap is what keeps Chromatic affordable for big Storybooks. It uses the Webpack or Vite dependency graph to capture only the stories affected by a change. The rest are copied from the baseline and billed at 0.2 of a snapshot each. But Chromatic’s Playwright docs and Cypress docs say TurboSnap is incompatible with both, because they test a fully built app. End-to-end tests pay the full rate on every build.
Chromatic alternatives at a glance
| Tool | Free tier | Cheapest paid plan | Works from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chromatic | 5,000 snapshots a month, Chrome only | $179/month, 35,000 snapshots | Storybook, Playwright, Cypress, Vitest |
| Diffy | 500 screenshots a month | $67/month billed annually ($80 monthly), 2,000 screenshots | A list of URLs |
| Percy | 5,000 screenshots a month | $199/month billed annually ($249 monthly), 10,000 screenshots | Storybook, your tests, Percy’s CLI |
| Argos | Up to 5,000 screenshots, one-person account | $100/month, 35,000 screenshots | Screenshots from your tests or Storybook, taken in your CI |
| Happo | 5,000 snapshots a month, Chrome only | $149/month, 50,000 snapshots | Storybook, Playwright, Cypress, Vitest |
| Applitools | Free trial, no free plan | $667/month paid annually, 1,000 page or 100,000 component checkpoints | An SDK in your tests, Storybook |
| Playwright, Vitest | Free and open source | — | Your tests |
| Loki | Free and open source | — | Storybook |
| BackstopJS | Free and open source | — | A list of URLs |
Which alternative, depending on why you are leaving
| If you are leaving because… | Look at |
|---|---|
| The snapshot bill grows with every browser and viewport | Argos, Happo, or TurboSnap if you haven’t turned it on |
| You test with Playwright or Cypress, so TurboSnap doesn’t apply | Argos, Percy, Playwright’s own screenshots |
| You want Safari or Firefox without paying $179 | Happo (Firefox from $149), Diffy (WebKit from $67 billed annually, $80 monthly), Percy (four browsers on its free tier) |
| You want annual billing | Percy, Diffy, Happo (Pro and Enterprise), Applitools |
| You need to test a deployed website, not code | Diffy, BackstopJS |
| You want no vendor at all | Playwright, Vitest, Loki, BackstopJS |
What a Storybook costs on each tool
Take a Storybook with 300 stories, tested at two viewports in Chrome, with 20 builds a month. That’s 600 snapshots a build and 12,000 a month, before TurboSnap or any partial runs.
| Tool | Cheapest list price for 12,000 a month |
|---|---|
| Chromatic | $179/month (Starter). With TurboSnap, if a typical build changes 10% of stories, it’s about 3,360 billed snapshots, which can fit the free plan if few builds trigger a full rebuild (a Storybook configuration change does, for example) |
| Argos | $100/month (Pro) |
| Happo | $149/month (Starter) |
| Percy | About $271/month billed annually (Desktop 10,000 plus 2,000 extra at $0.036), or $321 month to month |
| Diffy | $250/month billed annually, $300 monthly (30,000 plan) |
| Playwright, Vitest, Loki | $0 |
For a component library, Diffy costs more than Chromatic, Argos and Happo here (it’s slightly cheaper than Percy), and Chromatic with TurboSnap may cost nothing. We’d rather say that than hide it. Diffy is built for whole pages of deployed sites, where the comparison changes: see visual testing pricing compared for the same exercise on a website.
Diffy
Diffy is ours. It is URL-based: you paste URLs or import a sitemap, pick breakpoints, and compare two environments, such as production and staging, or the same site before and after a change. There is no SDK, no test code and nothing installed on the site. That’s the main difference from Chromatic, which always starts from your stories or tests.
- Free: 500 screenshots a month, production and staging environments, screenshot modification settings, one month of history.
- Paid: from $67/month billed annually ($80 monthly) for 2,000 screenshots, adding more environments, CI automation and six months of history. Then $125/month for 8,000 and $250/month for 30,000, billed annually ($150 and $300 monthly). See pricing.
- Counting: one page at one breakpoint is one screenshot. Comparing two freshly captured environments uses a set from each.
- Over the limit: no overage charges. New screenshots pause until the month resets or you move up a plan.
- Browsers: Chrome or WebKit, chosen per project, at widths from 240px to 2000px.
A published Storybook is a set of URLs, so Diffy can screenshot story pages like any other page. Capellic, a Drupal agency, works this way: each component is approved in Storybook and then captured with Diffy, and every change is checked against that baseline.
Where it beats Chromatic: testing a deployed website without writing tests, comparing environments rather than Git branches, and Safari’s engine (WebKit) from $67 a month billed annually ($80 month to month) rather than $179.
Where it does not: price per snapshot for a component library, change detection like TurboSnap, Git-based baselines on every pull request, and browser coverage (no Firefox or Edge).
Full head-to-head: Diffy vs Chromatic
Percy
The closest like-for-like swap if you want a hosted tool with a Storybook SDK and a wide browser list. Percy is part of BrowserStack. Its Storybook SDK, @percy/storybook, runs against a static build or a running Storybook. Percy’s docs list Storybook 6 to 10; the current SDK release needs Storybook 8 or later.
Free is 5,000 screenshots a month. Desktop is $199/month billed annually ($249 month to month) for 10,000 screenshots, or $449 ($549) for 25,000, with extra screenshots at $0.036. Desktop & Mobile is $599/month billed annually ($729 month to month) for 25,000, with extras at $0.048. Free, Desktop and Desktop & Mobile all have unlimited users.
Percy counts one page or component in one browser at one width as one screenshot. New projects have Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Safari enabled by default, and each browser counts separately.
Where it beats Chromatic: four browsers listed on the free plan, and annual billing.
Where it does not: a higher price per screenshot, and its pricing lists no discounted rate for unchanged snapshots like TurboSnap’s 0.2.
Percy alternatives · Diffy vs Percy
Argos
The cheapest hosted option here at low and mid volumes, and the most direct replacement if you’re a developer team reviewing on pull requests. Argos is open-source code run as a hosted service. Its Storybook SDK, @argos-ci/storybook, captures your stories with Playwright in your own CI and uploads them. It supports Storybook 8 through 11. Argos also takes screenshots from Playwright, Cypress and other test runners.
The Hobby plan is free for up to 5,000 screenshots, for one person. Pro starts at $100/month, billed monthly based on usage, with 35,000 screenshots included. Extra screenshots are $0.004, or $0.0015 for Storybook screenshots captured with its Test Runner or Vitest integration. Hobby pauses at the limit; Pro keeps going and bills the extras, which you can cap with spend management.
Where it beats Chromatic: price, by a wide margin, and a low rate for end-to-end screenshots as well as Storybook ones.
Where it does not: you run the browser in your own CI, so cross-browser coverage is whatever your runner provides, and there’s no automatic change detection like TurboSnap. Argos’s migration guide points to subset builds and sharding instead, which you set up yourself.
Argos has a guide to migrating from Chromatic. We compare it with Diffy in Diffy vs Argos.
Happo
The pick if you want more snapshots per dollar, or Safari on iPhone and iPad, which Chromatic doesn’t list. Happo screenshots Storybook, Playwright, Cypress and Vitest tests in Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Edge, and in Safari on iPhone and iPad.
| Plan | Price | Snapshots a month | Browsers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 5,000 | Chrome |
| Starter | $149/month | 50,000 | Chrome, Firefox |
| Growth | $399/month | 150,000 | Chrome, Firefox, Safari |
| Pro | $749/month | 300,000 | Chrome, Firefox, Safari, iOS Safari, Edge |
Extra snapshots on paid plans are $0.006 each, and Free pauses at the limit. Every plan has unlimited users, and the pricing page says annual billing is available on Pro and Enterprise. Each browser counts as a separate snapshot.
Where it beats Chromatic: more snapshots for the money, Firefox from $149, and iOS Safari.
Where it does not: Safari starts at $399 and Edge at $749, against $179 for all four on Chromatic Starter.
Full head-to-head: Diffy vs Happo
Applitools
The direction to go if you’re leaving because you need more, not less. Applitools’ Starter plan is $667/month paid annually for 1,000 page checkpoints or 100,000 component checkpoints, with unlimited users. It includes Storybook component testing, accessibility testing, a Figma integration and its Visual AI. Professional and Enterprise are priced through sales. There is a free trial and no free plan.
Where it beats Chromatic: AI-based comparison, accessibility testing on Starter, functional testing on Professional, and enterprise options.
Where it does not: price, and the pricing page doesn’t say how browsers and viewports count against Starter’s checkpoints.
Applitools alternatives · Diffy vs Applitools
Playwright and Vitest screenshot assertions
If your tests already run in Playwright or Vitest browser mode, you have visual testing at no cost.
- Playwright:
await expect(page).toHaveScreenshot(). Reference images are named per browser and platform, and the docs say to run tests in the same environment that created the baselines. - Vitest:
await expect(element).toMatchScreenshot()in browser mode. The docs keep references in__screenshots__folders next to your tests and warn that rendering isn’t deterministic across machines, recommending Docker or CI-generated references.
Where they beat Chromatic: no cost, no vendor, no snapshot limit.
Where they do not: baselines live in your repository, there’s no hosted review UI, and keeping rendering consistent across machines is your job.
Loki
A free, MIT-licensed tool built specifically for Storybook. It renders stories in Chrome (in Docker, which is recommended, or a local install) and can also use an iOS simulator or Android emulator, then compares them with reference images in your project. We describe it in detail in Diffy vs Loki.
Check its maintenance first. The latest version on npm is 0.35.1, published on 27 August 2024, and it declares support for Storybook 5 to 8 through its @storybook/react peer dependency.
Where it beats Chromatic: free and self-hosted.
Where it does not: no hosted review, and no declared support for Storybook 9 or later.
BackstopJS
The open-source option for testing pages by URL rather than stories. You list URLs and scenarios in backstop.json, then run backstop test and backstop approve. It’s MIT licensed. The latest version on npm is 6.3.25, published on 7 September 2024.
Where it beats Chromatic: free, unlimited and URL-based.
Where it does not: you own the setup, the baselines and the CI job, and it isn’t built for component libraries.
Full head-to-head: Diffy vs BackstopJS
What you give up by leaving Chromatic
- The Storybook connection. Storybook’s own docs point to Chromatic for visual testing, through the
@chromatic-com/storybookaddon, so tests and review sit inside Storybook. - TurboSnap. Copied snapshots at 0.2 can make a large Storybook far cheaper than the raw snapshot count suggests.
- Git-aware baselines. Every build is tied to a commit and compared with the right ancestor, which suits pull-request review.
- Retention. At least 12 months of builds and snapshots on every plan.
Before you migrate
- Assume baselines don’t transfer. Argos’s migration guide says so directly. Expect to capture a fresh baseline and approve a noisy first run.
- Recount your volume in the new tool’s unit. Stories, viewports, themes, browsers and builds all multiply, and TurboSnap or partial runs change the answer a lot.
- Decide who reviews. If developers approve changes on the pull request, Argos, Percy and Happo fit. If a QA lead, a project manager or a client signs off on a website, they need a review UI they can use without opening a test run.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Chromatic cost?
Chromatic is free for 5,000 snapshots a month in Chrome. Starter is $179 a month for 35,000 snapshots and adds Safari, Firefox and Edge, with extra snapshots at $0.008. Pro is $399 a month for 85,000, and Enterprise is custom. Self-serve plans are billed monthly only.
What is the best free alternative to Chromatic?
If you already run Playwright or Vitest browser mode, their built-in screenshot assertions cost nothing, with baselines kept in your repository. Loki is free and open source for Storybook, though its latest release supports Storybook 5 to 8. Among hosted tools, Percy gives 5,000 screenshots a month, Argos up to 5,000 on a one-person account and Happo 5,000 snapshots a month in Chrome.
Which Chromatic alternative works with Storybook?
Percy (@percy/storybook), Argos (@argos-ci/storybook), Happo (the happo package with its Storybook integration) and Applitools (Storybook component testing is part of its Starter plan) all test Storybook stories. Loki is an open-source option. Diffy can screenshot the URLs of a published Storybook, but it is built for whole pages of deployed websites.
Does TurboSnap work with Playwright or Cypress?
No. Chromatic’s Playwright and Cypress docs say TurboSnap is incompatible with them, because those tools test a fully built app and TurboSnap needs to track code changes. With Playwright or Cypress, every snapshot in every build is billed at the full rate.
Can I move my Chromatic baselines to another tool?
Plan on no. Argos’s guide to migrating from Chromatic says baselines don’t transfer, and we found no documented import in the other tools either. Expect to capture a fresh baseline in the new tool and approve its first run.
Where to go next
- Visual testing pricing compared: every tool’s prices, free tiers and counting rules side by side.
- The best visual regression testing tools in 2026: the tools themselves, beyond price.
- What visual regression testing is, if you’re evaluating the category rather than a tool.
Try Diffy free: 500 screenshots a month, no test suite required.