Key Insights from The Forrester Wave™: Autonomous Testing Platforms, Q4 2025
The Forrester Wave™: Autonomous Testing Platforms, Q4 2025 report insights. Learn about the shift to autonomous creation, resilience, and vendor strategy.
Autonomous testing continues to evolve as enterprises look for ways to reduce manual effort, increase test resilience, and keep pace with faster release cycles. In The Forrester Wave™: Autonomous Testing Platforms, Q4 2025, Forrester evaluated 15 autonomous testing platform providers to help buyers understand how the market is shaping up and what capabilities matter most.
Below are the key insights from the report and what they reveal about the current state of autonomous testing.
What The Forrester Wave™ Evaluates
The report assesses autonomous testing platforms across three primary dimensions:
- Current offering, including test authoring and design, autonomous creation, execution, maintenance, reporting, as well as capabilities for testing AI infused apps.
- Strategy, which examines vendor vision, innovation, roadmap, partner ecosystem, pricing flexibility, and community engagement.
- Customer feedback, measures customer-reported experience through reference interviews and Forrester’s historical research.
Together, these criteria provide a comprehensive view of how well platforms support enterprise-scale, AI-driven testing initiatives.
Autonomous Test Creation Is Now Foundational
One of the clearest themes in the report is that AI-assisted and autonomous test creation has become table stakes. Platforms are expected to help teams move from intent to executable tests with minimal manual scripting.
The evaluation highlights that autonomous creation capabilities are no longer emerging features but core requirements for modern testing platforms. An emerging focus in the Wave was on the enabling testing of AI infused applications, meaning testing of various AI dimensions such as accuracy, hallucinations, and business performance.
Reducing Flakiness and Maintenance Is a Priority
Forrester’s analysis emphasizes the growing importance of resilient automation. Test suites that frequently break undermine confidence and slow delivery, making self-healing and maintenance reduction critical evaluation criteria.
The report reflects buyer demand for platforms that can adapt to application changes and reduce the ongoing effort required to keep tests stable over time.
Strategy and Vision Matter as Much as Features
Beyond individual capabilities, the report underscores that long-term platform value depends on strategy. Buyers are looking for vendors with a clear vision for autonomous testing, a strong pace of innovation, and roadmaps aligned with evolving AI-driven development practices.
This includes thoughtful approaches to agentic testing, deeper autonomy, and alignment with enterprise operating models and testing of AI.
Enterprise Readiness Extends Beyond Core Automation
The evaluation also considers practical enterprise needs, such as:
- Support for complex SaaS and business applications
- Collaboration across QA and engineering teams
- Reporting, analytics, and quality insights
- Transparent and predictable pricing models
These factors influence how well platforms can scale across organizations and support long-term adoption.
What Buyers Can Take Away
For teams evaluating autonomous testing platforms, the report highlights several considerations:
- Look beyond AI labels to assess true autonomous capability
- Prioritize resilience and maintenance reduction
- Evaluate vendor strategy alongside current features
- Consider usability and adoption across roles
- Understand if and how testing of AI is in the long term roadmap
- Understand how pricing models scale with usage
These considerations help buyers navigate a rapidly maturing market.
Functionize in the Evaluation
Functionize was recognized as a Strong Performer in The Forrester Wave™: Autonomous Testing Platforms, Q4 2025.
The evaluation cites Functionize’s position relative to the other evaluated vendors, which Functionize believes reflects its strengths in AI-assisted and autonomous testing as well as areas for continued evolution as the category advances.
Conclusion
As autonomous testing platforms mature, independent evaluations like The Forrester Wave™: Autonomous Testing Platforms, Q4 2025 offer valuable perspective on market direction and vendor capabilities. For QA and engineering leaders, the report provides a useful framework for understanding how autonomous testing can support faster, more reliable software delivery.
To explore the full evaluation and detailed vendor analysis, access the complete report from Forrester.
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