What are some good real-device cloud platforms (for iOS and Android) other than BrowserStack, and which should I pick for Android automation?

General Discussions
1

I need a platform for running tests on actual Android and iOS devices (not emulators) — for both browser-based testing and native/hybrid app testing. BrowserStack isn’t an option for me, so I’m looking for other real-device cloud services that:

  1. offer a large variety of real device models (phones + tablets)

  2. support mobile browsers (Chrome on Android, Safari on iOS, etc.)

  3. allow automation via frameworks like Selenium, Appium, or others

  4. let me run tests in parallel and get good debugging tools (logs, video, network)

2

LambdaTest Real Device Cloud

LambdaTest gives access to 10,000+ real Android and iOS devices.

Their automated device testing supports Appium, XCUITest, and more. LambdaTest

You also get network throttling (2G, 3G, 4G), geolocation testing, and device logs.

For interactive testing, you can use real browsers on these devices (Safari, Chrome, etc.).

Pros: Very scalable, supports both web and mobile automation, great debugging and parallelism. Trade-off: Can get costly for very large parallel sessions, but price-performance is very good compared to many competitors.

3

Kobiton Mobile Device Cloud

Kobiton provides a real-device cloud with a broad range of Android & iOS devices.

One standout feature is virtualUSB: you can connect to a cloud device as if it’s physically plugged in, allowing you to debug from your IDE or use DevTools.

Supports parallel automated testing, so teams can run Appium or WebDriver tests in CI.

Their model helps reduce cost since you don’t need to maintain your own device lab, but still get real-device fidelity.

Pros: Good for detailed debugging, especially for developers and QA working in IDEs; allows real-device testing with a realistic development feel. Trade-off: Depending on the device you pick, queue or availability may vary; also, the IDE-debug model may have a slight learning curve.

4

My Recommendation If I were building a scalable mobile web and app automation stack, I’d lean first toward LambdaTest because of its huge real-device inventory and strong automation support. For more ad-hoc testing or manual exploratory work, pCloudy is a very reliable alternative. If you want deep hands-on debugging on real devices, Kobiton’s virtualUSB is incredibly powerful.