Katalon Regression Testing Nightmares

Regression automated testing means running the same tests over and over to make sure old features still work after recent changes. On the surface, Katalon seems built for this: it lets you record user actions (clicks, form fills, navigation) and replay them automatically. Once a test scenario is recorded, you can re-run it any time to check for breakage. As one SoftwareAdvice review puts it: “test cases can be created easily using the visual interface.” Sounds perfect for teams without QA automation engineers, or at least, that’s the promise. But then reality hits.

Switching from Katalon to a Real Test Automation Framework

This is a pain point we see all the time. It’s not rare, it follows nearly every software development department working on a product.

Let’s say a company has a product, something like an ERP/ CRM system for B2B clients. It was built a long time ago, works fine, brings real money, and the business keeps expanding: UK, EU, US, Canada.

Their biggest issue: the backlog is packed with business-critical tasks. The dev team delivers. No problem there. But the product keeps evolving, and now they hit the wall: they need solid regression testing to make sure each new release doesn’t break something in production.

To do that, they need automation. Real automation.

Clients like this usually have developers (in-house or outsourced) but they don’t have strong QA automation people. So they try to automate things with the team they have. And without the right specialists, they end up reaching for something like a Katalon Recorder.

Six to eight months later? Nothing changed. No progress in regression quality. The tool wasn’t the solution. It just recorded mouse clicks and played them back. It acted more like a manual testing shortcut than actual automation.

And that’s the moment they start looking for a vendor who can build the real thing: from scratch, with actual best practices.

A company like ours steps in, looks at the product, the pain points, the budget. And we build the right setup. In this case, that meant a part-time QA automation engineer and a full-time manual QA.

The manual QA starts by writing real test cases: detailed, up-to-date, system-wide. Usually, whatever test cases exist are outdated and useless. And without solid test cases, there’s nothing to automate. Zero.

Meanwhile, the QA automation engineer builds a framework from scratch.  And because the setup is done right, the first automated test results show up within the first month.

We wrapped the initial 3-month phase with several key modules covered, both with test cases and automation, and proved we could deliver.

Now? The work continues. One part-time QA automation engineer. Two full-time manual QAs. Long-term engagement. Stable. Growing with the client’s business.

That’s the usual pattern. So... is it really worth wasting time on Katalon?

Rhetorical question.

But let’s ask it anyway: are we blowing this out of proportion? Or was this just one unlucky case?

Frustration with Katalon is Fairly Common 

Not Just One Case — This Happens All the Time

Our clients aren’t the only ones chasing a “quick win” in test automation when there’s no QA automation team on board. Katalon looks tempting: easy setup, polished reviews, slick case studies. It gives fast-growing teams the sense that full regression automation is finally within reach.

But that confidence doesn’t last.

Plenty of teams start with Katalon, thinking they’ve found the shortcut — only to hit the wall when things get more complex. The pattern is familiar:

• Basic web or API tests go fine.
• Then come branching logic, dynamic elements, edge cases.
• Katalon stalls.
  The team has no in-house automation engineers to troubleshoot or extend it.

And now what was supposed to “save time” starts wasting it.

One user nailed it: “for overall complicated scenarios, it’s not so good.” That’s the blocker. Teams expected a plug-and-play solution and instead found limitations they didn’t see coming. Some features, flows, or apps just weren’t testable at all.

This happens even in large enterprises. A manual QA lead, under pressure to “do automation,” rolls out Katalon as a fast track. But enterprise systems are messy, layered, dynamic, and that’s exactly where Katalon’s weaknesses show.

Not Great for Mobile Either

One team spent two months trying to use Katalon Studio for Android and iOS. They fought with flaky selectors, inconsistent behavior, especially on iOS. After all that time, they dropped it.

Their verdict? “Pretty inconsistent.” They scrapped it and moved to Appium, scripting everything manually — and finally got reliable results.

You Still Need Developers

Katalon promises “no-code” automation. But in reality? You’ll still need developers — especially once tests start breaking.

One tester put it simply: “Resolving issues sometimes requires a developer to help fix the test case.”

In large enterprise teams, this becomes a blocker. Manual testers can’t troubleshoot edge cases, and devs are already stretched. Every time something weird happens in a scripted test, a developer gets pulled in to debug and patch it.

One user on the forum summed up the reality after the honeymoon phase: “For my actual use cases, I need to do API testing, DB testing, and data-driven testing… so I started reading Groovy docs alongside Katalon docs.”

So much for no-code.

Performance & Scaling Break Down Fast

Then there's the speed issue. On G2, “slow performance” is one of the most common complaints about the Katalon platform.

Running many tests? The tool eats memory, slows down, even crashes.

One user said it plainly: “Uses a pretty big memory… crashes or slows down when running many scenarios.”

Without a dedicated QA engineer cleaning up object repositories, refactoring long tests, and optimizing test runs — Katalon starts dragging. Teams with large test suites watched the tool get slower and heavier over time.

And forget about parallel runs unless you start paying. The free Katalon Studio doesn’t support parallel execution out of the box. You’ll need extra licenses (Katalon Runtime Engine + TestOps) just to scale: something many teams discover too late.

The Recorder Isn’t Reliable

The core recorder feature? It’s not even reliable.

One tester ran Katalon against three different web apps — and in every case, the recorder failed to capture his actions properly.

One specific bug: if you type text and hit Enter, the recorder sometimes ignores it completely. That’s a major hole. The test passes, but the critical input was never even recorded.

Result: false positives, missed bugs, and flaky scripts.

Teams believed they had regression coverage, until something broke in prod, and no one knew why.

Others hit freezes, crashes, or IDE bugs.

One paying customer described an ongoing issue: “If you cut or delete more than 3 lines of code, the IDE goes into a crash loop.” He added, “They’ve known about it for over a year — still not fixed.”

Flaky Tests and Fragile Scripts

Katalon tests often fail for the wrong reasons — not because the app is broken, but because the script couldn’t find the element in time or clicked the wrong thing.

Even with features like Smart Wait and Self-Healing Locators, dynamic web elements (iframes, shadow DOMs, complex loaders) cause issues Katalon just doesn’t handle well.

Without someone writing proper wait logic or custom locator strategies, the tests break. A lot.

One best practice shared in the community: “Don’t rely on the recorder. For complex stuff, craft your XPaths or CSS selectors manually.”  Which again — takes technical skill.

What Happens When You Compare It to Real QA Automation

Teams that actually used Katalon in production eventually started comparing it to code-based frameworks, and the gap became obvious.

Reddit is full of posts like:

• “A Selenium WebDriver framework with good architecture is way better than Katalon — even if it takes more time to build.”
  “We went back to PyTest + Selenium. Way more stable, and cheaper in the long run.”

Yes, Katalon gives you a fast start.

To a mid-level manager, it looks great — test cases running in a day or two with record-and-play. But real automation takes more than that.

Building a test framework from scratch (with page objects, utilities, data layers) takes a few weeks. But then you own it — fully.

Maintainability Is Where Katalon Fails

In solid QA setups, you use design patterns: Page Object Model, data-driven testing, reusable functions.

Katalon technically supports these, but doesn’t enforce or guide you. That’s where teams get sloppy — and things break.

Professional QA teams have debugging workflows. They log what matters, plug into dev tools, and can trace issues fast.

Katalon?

• Has basic logs and screenshots.
• Doesn’t let you pause or inspect a failed step mid-run.
  

One user said it best: “The compiler just jumps to the next line without telling you what the real error is.”

That leads to guesswork. Workarounds. Lost time.

Sure, some advanced users plug Katalon into TestOps or external reporting. But again — only if someone technical sets that up. Most teams don’t.

CI/CD and Scaling? Not Without a Fight

Professional frameworks are built to live inside CI/CD: Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab runners, whatever.

They run in parallel. They fit into version control. They play nice with code review and team workflows.

Katalon… sort of supports this. You can trigger it via CLI, push results to TestOps, but there’s friction.

Example:

• Git integration? “Awful.” No diff view. No decent commit interface.
• Want to run tests in CI? Sure, but you’ll pay extra (Runtime Engine licensing).
  One user flat out called that model “absurd.”

In open-source stacks, you don’t pay for test execution, just your servers. That’s why many teams drop Katalon and move back to custom frameworks once they hit scale.

Bottom Line

Yes, Katalon can be used like a professional tool, but only if you treat it like a framework and apply actual engineering discipline. Most teams don’t.

The ease-of-use that draws people in becomes a trap. Without strategy and expertise, Katalon falls short.

For teams that do recognize this, the story splits:

• Some bring in real test automation engineers to fix what’s broken.
• Others ditch it entirely and move to engineer-driven, open-source frameworks.

Because in the end, no tool replaces a good strategy. And Katalon, for all its promises, is not a magic wand. Plenty of teams learned that the hard way.

Belitsoft enhances your regression testing with expert QA engineers. By outsourcing our testing teams, you eliminate flaky test scripts, reduce maintenance efforts, and ensure stable, automated regression cycles. Get expert consultation for robust, reliable test automation. Contact us to discuss your testing needs.