ReportPortal Alternative: Test Analytics Without Enterprise Complexity

You need test analytics, so you evaluate ReportPortal. Then you see the requirements: Elasticsearch, PostgreSQL, RabbitMQ, MinIO — five services just to view test results. For most teams, the infrastructure cost of running ReportPortal dwarfs the value of the analytics it provides.

The ReportPortal Trade-offs

ReportPortal offers a lot of features: real-time reporting, ML-based failure analysis, custom dashboards, and extensive integrations. But those features come with costs:

Infrastructure Requirements

A typical ReportPortal deployment needs:

PostgreSQL database
Elasticsearch (or OpenSearch)
RabbitMQ message queue
MinIO or S3 for binary storage
The ReportPortal services themselves

That’s 5+ services to deploy, monitor, and maintain. The official docs recommend 16GB+ RAM for a production setup.

Operational Overhead

Running ReportPortal means:

Managing Elasticsearch indices and storage
Monitoring RabbitMQ queues
Database backups and maintenance
Keeping all services updated
Handling scaling as test volume grows

This requires dedicated DevOps attention, which smaller teams often can’t spare.

Learning Curve

ReportPortal’s feature set is extensive. Dashboards, widgets, filters, defect types, analysis rules - there’s a lot to learn. Teams often end up using 20% of the features after spending significant time on setup.

Gaffer: Test Reporting Without the Overhead

Gaffer focuses on the core problem: getting test results out of CI and into a place where your team can actually use them.

Zero Infrastructure

Gaffer is a hosted service. No databases, no message queues, no Elasticsearch. Sign up, get an API key, upload results.

Simple Setup

Add one step to CI:

- name: Upload to Gaffer
  if: always()
  uses: gaffer-sh/gaffer-uploader@v1
  with:
    gaffer_api_key: ${{ secrets.GAFFER_UPLOAD_TOKEN }}
    report_path: ./playwright-report

That’s it. Reports are now hosted and shareable.

Focus on What Matters

Gaffer provides:

Test report hosting - Shareable URLs for every test run
Flaky test detection - Automatic identification of unreliable tests
Pass rate trends - See test health over time
Slow test tracking - Find tests dragging down your CI
Slack notifications - Get alerts when tests fail
GitHub integration - Commit statuses and PR comments

No ML-powered failure classification, no complex dashboard builders. Just the essentials, done well.

Feature Comparison

Feature	ReportPortal	Gaffer
Test report hosting	Yes	Yes
Historical trends	Yes	Yes
Flaky test detection	Yes	Yes
ML failure analysis	Yes	No
Custom dashboards	Yes	No
Self-hosting required	Yes	No
Infrastructure needs	High	None
Setup time	Hours/Days	Minutes
Pricing	Self-host or SaaS	SaaS

Framework Support

Both platforms support major frameworks, though integration methods differ:

Framework	ReportPortal	Gaffer
Playwright	Agent	Native HTML + CTRF
Jest	Agent	JSON + CTRF
Vitest	Agent	HTML + CTRF
pytest	Agent	pytest-html + CTRF
JUnit	Agent	JUnit XML

ReportPortal uses “agents” that report results in real-time. Gaffer parses standard report formats after test runs complete - no custom agents needed.

When to Use ReportPortal

ReportPortal might be a better fit if you:

Have dedicated DevOps capacity for infrastructure
Need ML-powered failure analysis
Want highly customizable dashboards
Run thousands of tests and need real-time reporting
Have enterprise compliance requirements for self-hosting

When to Use Gaffer

Gaffer is probably a better fit if you:

Want test reporting without infrastructure overhead
Have a small-to-medium team
Need quick setup that just works
Value simplicity over feature count
Want to avoid the ops burden of running 5+ services

Migration Path

If you’re currently using ReportPortal and finding the maintenance burden too high:

Add Gaffer upload to your CI pipeline (alongside ReportPortal initially)
Use your existing report formats - no agent changes needed
Evaluate for a few weeks
Remove ReportPortal agents if Gaffer meets your needs
Decommission ReportPortal infrastructure

The upload-based approach means you’re not locked in - you can switch back or run both if needed.

Other Comparisons

Evaluating multiple tools? See how Gaffer compares to Allure.

Try It

Gaffer’s free tier gives you 500 MB storage with 7-day retention. Enough to see if the simpler approach works for your team.

Try Gaffer Free

Gaffer