Say Goodbye to Cypress Dashboard Fees: Meet Sorry-Cypress
If you've used Cypress for end-to-end testing, you've probably hit the same wall many of us have: the official Cypress Dashboard is fantastic for insights and parallelization, but it's a paid service. For teams on a budget, in regulated industries that require data to stay on-prem, or for anyone who just prefers self-hosting, it's a blocker.
That's where Sorry-Cypress comes in. It’s an open-source, self-hosted alternative that replicates the dashboard experience without the cost or data egress. No more sorry excuses for skipping a test dashboard—just a solid, free replacement.
What It Does
Sorry-Cypress is a drop-in replacement for the Cypress Dashboard API. It consists of a few microservices that handle receiving test results, storing them, and serving them up in a clean UI. When you point your Cypress runs to your own Sorry-Cypress instance instead of Cypress.io, you get:
- A centralized dashboard for reviewing test runs, specs, and failures.
- Parallel test execution across multiple machines.
- Artifact storage for videos and screenshots.
- Full control over your data since everything lives on your infrastructure.
Why It’s Cool
Beyond just being free, Sorry-Cypress brings a few clever ideas to the table. It’s designed to be modular—you can run the entire system or just pieces of it. For example, you can use its director service to handle parallelization but keep using your own storage for artifacts.
It’s also built with real-world use in mind. The project supports Docker, making deployment straightforward, and it can scale to handle large test suites. Since it’s open source, you can tweak it to fit your CI pipeline perfectly or add features specific to your workflow.
How to Try It
The quickest way to get started is with Docker. The project provides a docker-compose.yml file that spins up all the necessary services: the director, API, dashboard, and even a Minio instance for storing artifacts.
Clone the repo:
git clone https://github.com/sorry-cypress/sorry-cypress.git
Navigate to the directory and fire it up:
cd sorry-cypress
docker-compose -f dev/docker-compose.dev-with-ui.yml up
Then, configure your Cypress runs to use your local instance by setting the api_url in your cypress.json or via environment variables:
{
"projectId": "your-project-id",
"apiUrl": "http://localhost:1234/"
}
Now, run your tests as usual—they’ll report to your dashboard instead of Cypress Cloud.
You can also check out the project’s website at sorry-cypress.dev for more detailed docs and deployment guides.
Final Thoughts
Sorry-Cypress isn’t just a cost-saver; it’s a testament to the open-source community filling gaps left by commercial products. It’s especially useful for teams that need full control over their testing data or are running tests at a scale where dashboard fees would become significant.
If you’re already using Cypress and want to level up your testing workflow without adding another SaaS bill, give Sorry-Cypress a try. It might just be the missing piece in your CI/CD pipeline.
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