20 Demo Sites for Automation Testing in 2025

Raj Kumar
Automation
September 18, 2025 09:29 AM

If you’re like me, you want a reliable set of demo sites to practice automation testing without constantly fighting flaky environments or legal gray areas. Over the years I've collected and used a bunch of testing playgrounds. Some are intentionally buggy by design, others simulate real-world apps, and a few are perfect for specific tooling like Playwright, Selenium, or Cypress.

This post curates 20 demo sites for automation testing in 2025 picked for variety, realism, and usefulness. Whether you're sharpening end-to-end skills, learning API automation, or building robust test suites, these QA testing demo websites will give you practical, hands-on scenarios. I’ll also share test ideas, common pitfalls, and suggested tooling for each site.

Think of this as your go-to list of automation testing practice sites to rotate through. I’ve included quick test suggestions so you can start scripting right away.

How to use this list

Quick guidance before we dive in. In my experience, you’ll get the most value by rotating sites based on the skill you want to practice (UI flows, API contract checks, or performance/load). Pick a combination of simple and complex sites and try these exercises:

Write a smoke test for the happy path.
Add negative tests (invalid inputs, missing fields).
Create data-driven tests for edge cases.
Introduce flaky conditions (slow network, retries) to design resilient tests.
Try visual regression and accessibility checks.

Common pitfalls I see: brittle selectors, not isolating test data, and ignoring slow-loading elements. Don’t hardcode waits use smart waits and retry strategies. Also, maintain one source of truth for test data and environment URLs.

Tools to try

Here are the tools I recommend depending on your goal feel free to mix and match:

Selenium WebDriver classic cross-browser testing.
Cypress fast developer-friendly E2E for modern web apps.
Playwright robust cross-browser automation with auto-waiting.
Puppeteer headless Chrome automation, great for scraping and visual tests.
Appium mobile automation (real devices or emulators).
Postman / Newman API exploration and automation.
JMeter / k6 load and performance testing.
Percy / Applitools visual regression.

How I organized the list

Each entry below has a short description, suggested test types, quick test ideas, and a note on common traps. I kept the entries actionable so you can open a new test file and start scripting within minutes.

1. The Internet (Herokuapp-based playgrounds)

Why it’s useful: A collection of small, focused pages built for testing e.g., dropdowns, authentication, file upload, and redirects. These are often “toy” pages but mimic real browser behavior, making them great for learning selectors, waits, and flaky interactions.

Test ideas: form submissions, file uploads, redirect handling, multi-window tabs, and cookie/session tests. Use Selenium or Playwright to test cross-browser quirks.

Common mistakes: relying on brittle XPaths and not clearing cookies between tests. Also, these pages sometimes change paths or deployments; pin your environment URL when possible.

2. Demo QA (demoqa.com or similar)

Why it’s useful: A structured demo site with forms, widgets, selectable items, and nested frames. It's intentionally full of interaction types QA folks encounter in real apps.

Test ideas: dynamic tables, drag-and-drop, date picker automation, and nested frames. Try testing keyboard accessibility and tab order too.

Gotcha: drag-and-drop implementations differ, and some require low-level mouse actions. If your toolkit’s high-level commands fail, simulate pointer events or use JS execution to trigger the action.

3. Sauce Labs Sample App (Swag Labs)

Why it’s useful: A realistic single-page app (SPA) e-commerce demo used in many training docs. It’s great for practicing login flows, product filtering, cart behaviors, and session handling.

Test ideas: cross-browser verification of cart persistence, end-to-end checkout flow, and simulating slow network conditions. Great for CI runs and parallelization exercises.

Common mistakes: improper test isolation when reusing users, and over-reliance on UI for state verification supplement with API checks if possible.

4. Juice Shop (OWASP)

Why it’s useful: OWASP Juice Shop is intentionally insecure and a fantastic playground for security-aware testers. It’s also an actual single-page app with realistic features like product search, basket, and user accounts.

Test ideas: automating authentication flows, writing tests that assert XSS or SQL injection vectors (in a safe lab), and practicing security regression tests. Integrate with security scanners for automation pipelines.

Note: run Juice Shop locally or in an isolated environment. Don’t point security testing tools at public sites without permission.

5. Real World App Demos (e.g., OpenCart demo)

Why it’s useful: Full-feature e-commerce platforms mimic production complexity multi-step checkout, promotions, localization, and payment flows. These sites help you practice more realistic end-to-end scenarios.

Test ideas: multi-currency checks, localization, discount rules, coupon edge cases, and session timeouts. Also test loyalty features and email notifications via test mailboxes.

Common pitfalls: relying on the demo’s seeded test data. Reset your test data or use ephemeral accounts to avoid noisy state.

6. RESTful Booker (restful-booker.herokuapp.com)

Why it’s useful: A lightweight API demo for practicing REST automation. It supports typical CRUD operations, authentication, and date-based bookings.

Test ideas: contract tests, schema validation, negative tests for missing fields, concurrent booking attempts (race conditions), and token expiration handling. Perfect for integrating with Postman, RestAssured, or Playwright’s API layer.

Gotcha: rate limits and shared demo environments. Use unique test data and avoid long-running flood tests on public endpoints.

7. Petstore (Swagger / OpenAPI demo)

Why it’s useful: Many tutorials use the Swagger Petstore as a canonical API example. It’s useful for learning OpenAPI-driven testing, generating client code, and contract testing.

Test ideas: auto-generate API clients and write schema validation tests, perform end-to-end flows combining UI add-to-cart and backend API verification, and simulate partial failures for resilience tests.

Note: swagger-based demos are predictable, which is great for exploring contract-driven development (CDD) and consumer-driven contract testing.

8. ToDoMVC and similar micro-apps

Why it’s useful: Tiny apps built in multiple frameworks (React, Vue, Angular). ToDo apps are great for timing, state management, and cross-framework behavior checks.

Test ideas: test persistence across reloads, concurrency (two tabs editing the same item), and visual regression across frameworks. These are fast to spin up and ideal for unit-to-e2e transition practice.

Common mistakes: testing framework-specific internals (like component IDs) which don’t exist in production. Stick to user-facing behaviors.

Automation testing

9. Demo Banking Apps (safe, sandboxed)

Why it’s useful: Banking demos simulate complex flows like transfers, 2FA login, and reporting. They’re perfect for security, accessibility, and high-availability scenario practice.

Test ideas: automate 2FA flows using test hooks, perform negative tests for transaction limits, and validate audit trails. Also, test error handling around failed transactions.

Important: Use sandbox credentials and isolated environments. Don’t experiment on real banking systems.

10. E2E Playground sites (cypress.io sample apps)

Why it’s useful: Tool vendors like Cypress provide demo apps tailored for their tooling. These include apps with asynchronous behavior, spinners, and mocked APIs ideal to learn tool-specific best practices.

Test ideas: explore stubbing, mocking backends, and time-travel debugging (where supported). Try replacing mocks with real endpoints to see differences in flakiness and isolation.

Tip: vendor demos often include hidden test hooks or data attributes that make automation easier. Use those for tests when appropriate, but also practice without them to simulate real-world constraints.

11. Booking and Travel Demos

Why it’s useful: Flight/hotel booking demos have complex date logic, pricing rules, and multi-step flows. These are brilliant for testing date pickers, currency conversions, and session handling.

Test ideas: cross-timezone booking checks, partial failures (payment fails midway), and end-to-end itinerary validation. Also test price recalculation under promo changes.

Common pitfalls: flaky selectors on dynamic calendars and assuming a single price per item. Prices often change between requests design assertions to tolerate expected variance.

12. Social Media-style Demo Apps

Why it’s useful: These mimic feeds, infinite scrolling, and real-time updates. They give you practice with long lists, virtualized DOM elements, and websockets.

Test ideas: scroll-triggered loading, optimistic UI updates, and reconnection logic for real-time features. Also test rate limits and abusive content safeguards.

As an aside, infinite scroll tests often fail because scripts attempt to interact with elements not yet rendered use robust scrolling and retries.

13. Angular / React / Vue Boilerplate Demos

Why it’s useful: Boilerplate projects replicate component-based architectures common today. They help you test component integration, props/state changes, and router behavior.

Test ideas: simulate route changes, test lazy-loaded modules, and isolate component behaviors with unit/integration tests. Combine with E2E tests to validate full flows.

Note: E2E tests should validate contracts between components, not internal implementation.

14. Healthcare Demo Apps (HIPAA-safe sandboxes)

Why it’s useful: Healthcare demos provide complex workflows like patient records, appointment scheduling, and role-based access. They’re useful for role-based testing and data privacy practice.

Test ideas: role permission tests, audit trail verification, and secure data handling checks. Use mock PHI or synthetic data and test encryption-at-rest assumptions.

Important: never use real patient data. Always operate in HIPAA-safe sandbox environments.

15. CMS Demo Sites (WordPress / Drupal demos)

Why it’s useful: Content management systems are everywhere and are great for practicing content CRUD, WYSIWYG editors, and media handling.

Test ideas: workflow automation (draft → review → publish), media upload automations, and plugin compatibility checks. Use automation to verify content rendering across themes.

Gotcha: CSS-dependent selectors and dynamic IDs from plugins. Prefer semantic selectors and visible text assertions.

16. Accessibility Test Labs (a11y demo pages)

Why it’s useful: Accessibility demo pages intentionally include issues like missing ARIA roles, low contrast, or keyboard traps. They’re excellent for practicing automated and manual a11y checks.

Test ideas: integrate axe-core with your E2E suite, write keyboard-only navigation tests, and automate screen reader-friendly checks. Combine automated tests with manual audits for best coverage.

Note: not every a11y issue should be auto-fixed use automation to catch regressions and prioritize fixes with developers.

17. Localization & Internationalization Demos

Why it’s useful: I18n demo sites let you test language switching, formatting, and layout changes for RTL languages. They’re invaluable if your app supports multiple locales.

Test ideas: currency/date formatting checks, layout breaks for long translations, and RTL rendering. Also validate content fallback strategies when translations are missing.

Common mistakes: hardcoding text-based selectors that break across locales. Use data-test attributes or semantic selectors that survive translation.

18. Performance & Load Test Targets (small apps for k6/JMeter)

Why it’s useful: Use small demo APIs and apps designed for load testing practice. These let you experiment with virtual users, throttling, and profiling without impacting production.

Test ideas: baseline throughput tests, stress/until-failure, and bottleneck analysis. Capture CPU/memory metrics if the demo allows it to learn where bottlenecks appear.

Warning: always get permission if you’re testing anything hosted externally. Prefer local or sandboxed deployments for heavy loads.

19. Mobile App Demos (sample apps for Appium)

Why it’s useful: Mobile demo apps give you opportunities to test gestures, orientation changes, push notifications, and offline behavior. Real device cloud providers often provide sample apps to practice with.

Test ideas: swipe/gesture automation, notification handling, background/foreground lifecycle tests, and deep-link flows. Also test permissions and biometric triggers.

Pro tip: emulators are convenient, but nothing beats testing on real devices for performance and hardware-related bugs.

20. Microservices & Event-driven Demo Platforms

Why it’s useful: Microservice demo stacks let testers practice contract testing, messaging, and eventual consistency. These are great if you're interested in backend automation and CI/CD verification.

Test ideas: consumer-driven contract tests (Pact), message queue processing checks, and end-to-end saga simulations. Build tests that validate retries, idempotence, and compensating transactions.

Common pitfalls: treating end-to-end tests as unit tests these take longer and are more brittle. Favor contract tests and small integration tests for repeatable CI runs.

Putting it all together: test design tips

I’ve noticed teams often jump straight to writing UI tests without considering the test pyramid. A small reminder that helped me: prioritize unit and API tests, then add focused E2E tests for critical user journeys.

Here's a checklist I use when choosing a demo site and designing tests:

Define the goal (UI resilience, API contract, performance).
Pick a demo site that matches that goal.
Start with the happy path; then add negative and edge cases.
Isolate state: use unique test data or clean state hooks.
Add flaky scenarios and timeouts intentionally.
Run tests in parallel and validate for race conditions.
Monitor for false positives and tune assertions to be strict but tolerant of expected variability.

In my experience, automated tests need thoughtful assertions. Don’t assert entire pages of HTML; assert behaviors and critical DOM elements. That makes maintenance far easier.

Common mistakes and how to avoid them

Fragile selectors: prefer data-test attributes or stable ARIA labels.
Too many E2E tests: keep them targeted and short to avoid long pipelines.
No test data management: use fixtures, factories, or service hooks to set up and tear down state.
Ignoring flaky network conditions: simulate slow/unstable networks in CI to surface timing issues.
Not integrating accessibility: catch regressions early by running a11y checks in CI.

Sample quick scripts and patterns

Here are a few patterns I use across projects. They’re short, robust, and reduce flakiness:

Use explicit waits for conditions (element visible, clickable) instead of fixed sleeps.
Wrap retries around flaky actions (e.g., waiting for an uploaded file to finish processing).
Abstract selectors into page objects or component helpers so changes are localized.
Use API calls to set up data quickly and only rely on UI flows for UX validation.

Aside: I keep a small utility library of selectors and wait helpers across projects it often saves hours when demo sites change slightly.

How to evaluate a demo site for your needs

Not every demo site fits every purpose. When choosing a site, ask these questions:

Does it let me practice the specific interaction I need (e.g., websockets, file uploads)?
Is it allowed to automate against it (public sandboxes may have rate limits)?
Can I seed/reset test data easily?
Does it expose enough variability to learn real-world problems (async, flaky elements)?
Will it teach me tooling-specific features (mocking, network stubbing)?

Personally, I like to keep at least three demo sites in rotation: one for quick UI checks, one API-focused app, and one complex, multi-step app to validate longer user journeys.

Next steps: building a practice curriculum

If you want to turn this list into a learning plan, try this 6-week rotation:

Week 1 UI basics: The Internet + ToDoMVC; practice selectors and waits.
Week 2 API fundamentals: RESTful Booker + Petstore; practice CRUD and contract tests.
Week 3 E2E flows: Swag Labs + OpenCart demo; combine UI and API checks.
Week 4 Security + a11y: Juice Shop + accessibility demo pages; integrate scanning.
Week 5 Performance: k6/JMeter targets; spike and stress tests.
Week 6 Mobile and microservices: Appium sample apps + microservice demos; end-to-end orchestration.

By the end you'll have a portfolio of scripts, CI jobs, and a better sense of where your automation adds the most value.

Resources and learning tips

Couple of practical tips I wish I’d known earlier:

Keep your CI green by running fast suites first and heavier ones nightly.
Use containers for demo site dependencies so your team can spin up identical environments.
Log everything useful: request/response payloads, timings, and screenshots for failed runs.
Pair with a developer to add test hooks (when allowed) that partnership pays off fast.

Helpful Links & Next Steps

Wrap-up

I hope this curated list of demo sites for automation testing in 2025 gives you practical, varied playgrounds to level up your automation skills. Mix and match sites based on the technique you want to master. In my experience, regularly rotating environments, and intentionally introducing flaky conditions is the fastest way to learn how to write resilient tests.

If you’re building a practice curriculum or need demo environments tailored to your team, I recommend exploring vendor demo apps for tool-specific features and using isolated sandboxes for heavier tests.

Want more tools, templates, and curated demo environments? Explore More Demo Tools with Demo Dazzle:

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