Developer feedback continues to be a critical medium for us to ensure Firebase meets the needs of the community. Since we launched the expansion of Firebase at Google I/O in May, we received a clear message that many of you would like to try Firebase Test Lab without having to enter a credit card number and upgrade to the paid Blaze plan. We agree, and we're proud to introduce Firebase Test Lab for Android for the Firebase Spark and Flame plans. Here's how it works.
For Firebase projects on the Spark or Flame plan, you may run up to five tests on physical devices and up to ten tests on virtual devices on a daily basis. This means you have a total budget of fifteen tests to use throughout the day. For each test run, you may target up to four different devices, and you can mix physical and virtual devices as needed. For example, you could execute five runs targeting three devices each run, using your full budget of fifteen tests for the day. Or, each of your fifteen tests could be executed on a single device in fifteen individual runs.
For projects on the Spark plan, there is no billing information required to make use of your daily quota of tests.
For both plans, the daily quota of physical and virtual device tests refreshes at 12am PST, so you can use that to schedule your daily allotment of tests. The maximum duration for tests on virtual devices is one hour, and the maximum on physical devices is thirty minutes. You can also split your allotment of tests between Robo tests, which will test your application automatically, and instrumentation tests, which allow you to script your application with Espresso, UI Automator 2.0, and Robotium.
For projects on the Blaze plan, nothing changes. You continue to run tests for $5 per device-hour on physical devices. Virtual devices can be used at no cost till the end of December (12/31/2016) then at $1 per device-hour starting 2017.
Also available now is the ability to run tests against virtual devices with Nougat MR1 at API level 25. The Firebase Test Lab team is committed to making sure you have access to the latest versions of Android, so you can spot incompatibilities early during your development.
Improving the quality of your applications is easier with Firebase. Please let us know how you're using Firebase Test Lab for Android on our support channels, including the firebase-talk mailing list, and the #test-lab channel on the Firebase Slack.
