Comparison
TraceLoom vs Currents.dev
Currents.dev is a Playwright and Cypress analytics dashboard. TraceLoom provides orchestration plus BYOC compute with full trace capture. Both serve Playwright teams — here's how the approaches differ.
Bottom line: Currents.dev is a Playwright analytics dashboard (from $49/month) that reports on test results but doesn't run your tests. TraceLoom provides both orchestration and BYOC compute — it dispatches tests to EC2 Spot instances in your AWS account and captures full Playwright traces on every run.
Last updated: March 2026
| Currents.dev | TraceLoom | |
|---|---|---|
| Data ownership | Currents' servers — traces uploaded to their cloud | Your AWS account — traces never leave your VPC |
| Cost at scale | ~$49/mo+ based on recording volume | ~$50–300/mo compute (AWS Spot) + from $79/mo platform |
| Parallel workers | Orchestration layer; workers run in your CI | 50+ concurrent workers on EC2 Spot |
| Trace capture | Playwright traces and recordings captured | Full Playwright traces for every test, every run |
| CI integration | GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, CircleCI | GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, CircleCI |
| Setup complexity | NPM package + project key, minimal setup | 10-min CloudFormation deploy, then connect |
| Compliance / data residency | Data on Currents infrastructure, no self-hosted option | Data stays in your VPC and chosen AWS region |
Pricing based on publicly available information as of March 2026. Your actual costs will vary.
Analytics-Only vs Orchestration + Compute
Currents.dev is an orchestration and analytics layer. Your tests still run in your existing CI environment — GitHub Actions runners, GitLab CI, or whatever you use. Currents collects recordings, provides parallelization hints, and gives you a dashboard. This is clean and low-friction, but it means your parallelism is limited by your CI provider's runner capacity and pricing.
TraceLoom provides both the orchestration layer and the compute. When you trigger a test run, TraceLoom spins up EC2 Spot instances in your AWS account, distributes tests across them, captures traces, and reports results. You get 50+ parallel workers without managing CI runner pools or worrying about GitHub Actions' 20-job concurrency limit.
Data Ownership
Currents.dev stores recordings on their infrastructure. Test results, recordings, and analytics data live on Currents' servers. There's no self-hosted or BYOC option. For many teams, this is fine — but if data residency matters, it's a constraint.
TraceLoom's BYOC architecture means Playwright traces stay in your S3 bucket, inside your AWS account. TraceLoom only stores run metadata — pass/fail counts, timing, and test names. The test data path is entirely within your VPC.
Free Tier & Pricing
Currents.dev has no free tier — pricing starts at approximately $49/month for 10K recordings. Plans scale with recording volume and team seats. This is reasonable for teams that are past the evaluation stage, but there's no way to try it without paying.
TraceLoom offers a free tier at 500 runs/month — enough for small teams or evaluation. Paid plans start at $79/month for 5,000 runs. Your AWS Spot compute is a separate, visible cost in your own AWS bill. No surprises.
Who Each Is Best For
Currents.dev is a good choice for small-to-mid teams that want a dedicated Playwright dashboard without managing infrastructure. If your CI runners are sufficient for your parallelism needs and you just need better visibility into test results, Currents is focused and easy to set up.
TraceLoom is built for teams that need more parallelism than their CI provides, want full Playwright trace capture on every run, and require data to stay in their own cloud. TraceLoom is pre-revenue, Playwright-only, and AWS-only — it trades breadth for depth.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How does TraceLoom compare to Currents.dev?
- Both TraceLoom and Currents.dev are built for Playwright (and Cypress). The key difference is architecture: Currents is an analytics and orchestration layer — it collects recordings from your CI runners but doesn't provide compute. TraceLoom provides both orchestration and compute via BYOC EC2 Spot instances in your own AWS account, plus full Playwright trace capture stored in your S3 bucket.
- Is TraceLoom cheaper than Currents.dev?
- It depends on your volume. Currents.dev starts at ~$49/month for 10K recordings with no free tier. TraceLoom offers a free tier (500 runs/month) and Pro at $79/month (5,000 runs), plus your own AWS Spot compute. For low-volume teams, TraceLoom's free tier is a clear advantage. At higher volumes, compare total cost: Currents pricing scales with recordings, TraceLoom with runs plus compute. Pricing as of March 2026.
- When should I choose TraceLoom over Currents.dev?
- Choose TraceLoom when you need BYOC data ownership, a free tier to evaluate, and compute included in the platform (not billed separately through your CI runners). TraceLoom runs tests on EC2 Spot instances in your own AWS account and stores every trace in your S3 bucket. Currents.dev is the better fit when you only need an orchestration and analytics layer on top of your existing CI compute, and you are comfortable with test recordings living on Currents' infrastructure.
- Does TraceLoom support BYOC testing?
- Yes. TraceLoom's entire architecture is BYOC. Tests run on EC2 Spot instances in your AWS account, traces go to your S3 bucket, and TraceLoom only stores run metadata. Currents.dev does not offer BYOC — recordings are uploaded to Currents' servers.
- Does Currents.dev provide compute for running tests?
- No. Currents.dev is an orchestration and analytics layer. Your tests run in your existing CI environment (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, etc.), and Currents collects the results. TraceLoom provides both the orchestration layer and the compute (EC2 Spot instances), so you don't need to manage CI runner parallelism yourself.
Looking for alternatives to other testing platforms? See BrowserStack alternatives, Sauce Labs alternatives, or Cypress Cloud alternatives.
Related Reading
- The True Cost of Running Playwright Tests at Scale
A detailed cost comparison across GitHub Actions, BrowserStack, Sauce Labs, and BYOC on AWS Spot.
- What is BYOC Testing? A Guide for Engineering Teams
How BYOC works, why it matters for compliance, and how it compares to managed testing platforms.
- Playwright Test Sharding: How to Split Tests Across Workers
How Playwright's --shard flag works and when to use duration-aware sharding.
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