Katalon Studio v10.3.1 runs slower on Windows than on Mac

Web Testing
1

At the end of Aug 2025, I wrote a report “Katalon Studio v10.0.0 runs slower than v9.7.6”. After that, I got more questions:

  1. @petr.brezina suggested that Katalon Studio v10.3.1 runs slower on Windows than Mac. Is it a fact?
  2. The Smart Wait feature — how is it influencive to the processing time?

So I carried out one more time of performance examination of Katalon Studio versions. Let me report the result.

I used my Windows 11 laptop with 16GB memory. An ordinary consumer model, nothing special. I used my Mac Book Air as I used for my previous report.

KS Version Selenium Version Mac,Enabled Mac,Disabled Windows,Enabled Windows,Disabled
10.3.1 4.28.1 90.513s 75.3s 303.127s 245.666s
10.3.1 4.28.1 81s 127.940s 215.290s 195.372s
10.3.1 4.28.1 84s 103.769s 231.69s 289.160s
10.3.0 4.28.1 87s
10.3.0 4.28.1 86s
10.3.0 4.28.1 92s
10.2.4 4.28.1 85.948s
10.2.4 4.28.1 89.028s
10.2.4 4.28.1 84.740s
10.1.0 4.22.0 140.429s 103.269s 286.798s 204.320s
10.1.0 4.22.0 262.338s 96.156s 198.859s 190.299s
10.0.1 4.22.0 93.490s 70.772s 215.824s 220.112s
10.0.1 4.22.0 91.688s 75.884s 259.310s 182.832s
10.0.1 4.22.0 115.054s 75.266s 236.365s 171.646
10.0.0 4.22.0 84.270s 69.879s 71.553s 50.526s
10.0.0 4.22.0 84.270s 122.530s 68.438s 55.171s
10.0.0 4.22.0 85.543s 131.014s 69.725s 52.215s
9.7.6 3.141.59 72.118s 118.641s 57.579s 54.850s
9.7.6 3.141.59 71.211s 88.561s 57.579s 54.850s
9.7.6 3.141.59 69.830s 133.136s 55.282s 50.213s
9.0.0 75.949s
9.0.0 72.187s
9.0.0 73.694s

The result was suprising to me.

  1. The latest Katalon Studio v10.3.1 runs twice or three times slower on Windows than on Mac. Howerver, we should note, the previous version 9.7.6 ran fast enough on Windows on the same hardware/OS environment.

  2. Previously I wrote that v10.0.0 runs slower than v9.7.6. But the speed difference between v10.0.0 and v9.7.6 is far less significant than the speed difference of Windows and Mac using v10.3.1.

  3. Clearly v10.0.1 got slower than v10.0.0 on Windows. I infer there must be a change in v10.0.1 that caused the performance issue.

  4. The SmartWait feature seems to affect the turnaround time of the tests. However, I don’t see a straightforward rule about whether a test will be faster or slower with or without SmartWait.

  5. I examined the Test Suites/healthcare-test - TS_RegressionTest which can run without Smart Wait. I think it is a bad idea to enable Smart Wait as default by the settings Project>Execution to the tests that don’t require Smart Wait. Rather, you should enable Smart Wait selectively using WebUI.enableSmartWait() and WebUI.disableSmartWait() keyword to the test cases that really require Smart Wait. Otherwise, Smart Wait may affect your tests accidentally to run slower or faster; you may loose the control.

My suggestion

I would recommend you to switch from Windows to Mac to run your tests using Katalon Studio v10.* and onward.

5 Likes
Test Run initiation takes a very long time
Katalon Studio v10.0.0 runs slower than v9.7.6 --- a measurement report
Starting Katalon tests takes a very long time
I am using the latest Katalon version i.e. 10.3.1. And in the same, I am facing a problem in log viewer. At first, it is not showing anything, and after refreshing, It it displaying the log but consists redundant steps. What to do?
2

Looking into the steps

Let me look into the test steps:

  • v10.3.1 Mac

10.3.1_Mac
10.3.1_Mac1350×1602 425 KB

  • v10.3.1 Windows

10.3.1_Windows
10.3.1_Windows1116×755 102 KB

The step of WebUI.openBrowser(G_SiteURL) performed differently. It took 12.2 seconds on Mac, 40.4 seconds on Windows.

Is my Windows laptop connected to the network with a poor WiFi device which performed slowly? Or, Katalon Studio worked slowly on Windows for WebUI.openBrowser? I have no clear idea at the moment.

1 Like
3

Browser types

I wanted to know if the test runs differently according to the browser types. I checked it.

  • Chrome 139.0.7258.155
  • Firefox 142.0.1
  • Edge 139.0.3405.125
KS Version Mac,Chrome Mac,Firefox Mac,Edge Windows,Chrome Windows,Firefox Windows,Edge
10.3.1 75.561s 81.658s 91.776s 171.96s 163.318s 93.26s
10.3.1 72.549s 82.431s 90.863s 162.19s 169.436s 96.337s
10.3.1 75.27s 96.900s 177.90s 173.80s 93.83s 92.759s
10.3.1 110.930s
10.3.1 85.494s
10.3.1 91.82s
10.3.1 90.205s

Honestly, I don’t understand why the processing time varies as such.

2 Likes
4

Katalon Studio looks stable on my Mac Book Air. But it isn’t on my Windows laptop.

I use my Mac Book Air everyday, so the device is well-maintained. I use my Windows laptop just occasionally only when I have to. Therefore I am not quite sure if my Windows laptop is healthy enough.

I would hope for a second opinion. I hope someone who has Mac and Windows in his/her hands to re-examine the similar cases and report the result back here.

1 Like
5

I edited the original post.

In the table, I inserted a column labeled “Selenium Version” where I showed the version number of Selenium lib bundled in Katalon Studio.

I think that the Selenium 3 → Selenium 4 migration explains the performance gap between Katalon Studio v9.7.6 → v10.0.0.

1 Like