Test Automation Challenges You Can’t Ignore in 2025

Test automation has always been a moving target. When you think you have the perfect setup, the best tech stack, and fail-proof frameworks in place, the industry witnesses a massive disruption that shakes your entire workflow.

In 2025, the pressure on software is even greater—you have to release products faster and use smarter systems for the job. Let’s also not forget the constant push for quality at scale. Regardless of how advanced your testing processes are, some challenges will keep surfacing.

But what are they?

And what’s the best way to keep them at bay?

In this blog post, we’ll break down this year’s top ten challenges in automation testing and actionable steps you can take to eliminate them.

Test Automation Challenges in 2025: Insights and Strategies

1. Maintaining test automation ROI

It’s no secret that test automation initially demands a high investment in tools, infrastructure, and developers. Sometimes, you may need to consider licensing expenses and costs incurred in tech training and team onboarding.

When it comes down to the actual work, keeping up with changing app codes is essential. Scripts can become brittle and require frequent updates. Moreover, as the test suite grows, execution times can increase, creating bottlenecks during development.

Such challenges faced in automation testing can quickly erode the ROI.

Here’s what to do:

• Calculate the costs involved in setting up the automation framework and fixing production defects so you know what to expect
• Consider using AI testing tools, regardless of whether you’re working on a small project or a big one
• Break down the automation implementation into phases, prioritizing and budgeting for the most critical functionalities first

2. Network disconnection

One of the challenges in test automation is when the network connection gets lost or disrupted, making it hard to access databases and remote access VPNs, APIs, and other third-party services. The end result? The entire testing process gets unnecessarily delayed!

Here’s how to ensure test reliability:

• Implement network health checks before running tests; use commands like ‘ping,’ ‘curl,’ or APIs to verify connectivity
• Run multiple test environments so one failure doesn’t block others
• Store previous test data and replay them when disconnected

In addition, you can use TestGrid to launch a robust testing environment where you can simulate numerous network states on actual devices. There’s no need to use emulators. Testing on our platform is more accurate and covers broader test scenarios.

3. Shaky data reliance

Data plays a vital role in test automation, so it’s natural to include its mismanagement as one of the software testing challenges. The data must be in a specific state when the test script is executed.

For example, in ecommerce testing, the checkout test script must start with items already added to the cart to avoid testing unrelated functionality like browsing or adding products. If testing discounts, a cart with items qualifying for discounts must be set up.

Considering how test scripts behave when executed simultaneously across multiple test environments and configurations is essential.

Will it fail if the same data is used in multiple instances of the script?

What if the data of a script is built up by the execution of another test script? 

To boost data reliance, take the following steps:

• When possible, use mock data or virtual services to reduce dependencies on external systems
• Write test scripts in such a way that they create and clean all of the data needed for successful execution
• Generate unique identifiers (such as timestamps or GUIDs) to prevent data collisions in case tests need to run in parallel

4. AI and ML integration testing

The global AI testing market, valued at $414.7 million in 2022, is expected to grow at a CAGR of 18.4% from 2023 to 2030.

Although this sounds impressive, here’s the deal: The outputs of AI and ML systems aren’t fixed, unlike traditional software where a set of inputs delivers predictable outcomes. 

The two technologies adapt based on training data and may respond differently under similar conditions. For instance, an ML model trained to prioritize customer emails might perform well initially but degrade over time as customer behavior shifts or new patterns emerge.

It’s the dynamic nature that makes it difficult to test and maintain.

To address such AI/ML-focused challenges in test automation:

• Ensure training data reflects real-world scenarios and includes edge cases. You should also look for and remove gaps or biases that could skew the output.
• Create test cases that mimic production environments, focusing on variations the system might not expect.
• Use explainability frameworks to help verify whether the system’s reasoning aligns with its intended design. 

5. Poor team collaboration

Automation can only go so far without human insight. If all stakeholders – developers, software testers, business analysts, and project managers—work in silos without any common goal in mind, your test automation strategy will not fetch you the results you desire.

For example, an AI-powered tool might flag a visual alignment issue as critical, but a human tester could recognize that it doesn’t impact usability or the user experience.

Without someone to make that judgment, teams might waste time fixing something irrelevant while more important bugs go unnoticed.

To address this problem:

• Try to make all identified risks transparent at the initial stage and communicate them as soon as possible
• Don’t take outputs at face value; analyze test results, especially failures, to ensure they’re meaningful and actionable
• Implement project management solutions like ClickUp or Jira to enhance teamwork

6. Hyper-automation complexity

Gartner reports that hyper-automation technologies help minimize operational expenses by 30%.

But what’s one of the common problems with automation?

It doesn’t happen in isolation. It’s very much a part of interconnected workflows. No wonder hyper-automation, where multiple systems and tools work together, is slowly becoming the norm.

However, such interconnectedness comes with complexity. For example, if your CI/CD pipeline integrates test automation frameworks, deployment tools, and monitoring platforms, a minor update to one tool could cause issues across the pipeline.

The worst part? The inefficiencies can be hard to trace and curtail.

To manage this complexity, it’s best to:

• Design scripts that are independent of each other, so changes in one don’t require rewriting the entire suite
• Map out how your automation setup so you know how each component interacts with each other
• Set up systems to flag issues when automation workflows fail

7. Regulatory compliance and ethical constraints

Your test automation strategy should not overlook meeting compliance requirements, even if they are less straightforward than testing for performance or functionality.

Whether it’s GDPR, HIPAA, or any other industry—or region-specific regulation, your tests must validate that systems handle data and functionality in legally and ethically acceptable ways.

For example, you have an eCommerce platform handling user data. While your automated tests might verify the functionality of account creation, they might miss whether sensitive user data is stored or processed in ways that violate privacy regulations.

Here’s how you can manage this:

• Extend automated test cases to perform checks on regulatory requirements, such as data encryption, consent handling, and access controls
• Ensure your tests also validate inclusivity, accessibility, and bias-free performance, particularly for AI-driven systems
• Verify that test environments don’t expose real user data and that any sensitive information is handled appropriately

8. Skills gap and upskilling needs

Automation testing tools and frameworks constantly evolve, but your team’s skills might not always keep up. You would want them to bring domain knowledge and critical thinking to the forefront while having the know-how in scripting/coding.

They must also be able to deal with unexpected technical problems.

To avoid poor automation adoption or ineffective implementations:

• Provide focused learning opportunities in areas like scripting languages, API testing, or specific frameworks; platforms like Udemy, Pluralsight, or internal workshops can help
• Assign team members time to explore new tools, attend webinars, or experiment with emerging technologies
• Blend manual testers’ deep domain knowledge with automation specialists’ technical skills

9. Handling distributed systems

Modern apps often rely on microservices, cloud infrastructures, and edge services. They are complex, with components spread across different environments and communicating asynchronously.

This introduces a host of testing challenges in software testing, from service downtime to network latency.

For example, if you’re building a payment system on microservices, a delay in one service, such as fraud detection, can overturn the entire transaction flow. As discussed in hyper-automation, identifying such issues in an automated test environment isn’t straightforward.

Here’s what you can do:

• Test the interfaces between services to ensure expected and unexpected inputs are handled properly
• Simulate component outages to verify the system’s ability to degrade gracefully
• Use logs, metrics, and traces to oversee how distributed components interact

10. Rising cybersecurity risks

According to WEF, 66% of organizations expect AI to have the most impact on cybersecurity in 2025, and only 37% have processes to assess the security of AI tools before deployment.

A compromised test automation framework can expose sensitive data or provide a backdoor into your application.

That’s why you must:

• Use role-based permissions and multi-factor authentication to limit who can access  automation scripts, pipelines, and test environments
• Avoid using real user data in test environments; use anonymized or synthetic data instead
• Regularly update and patch automation frameworks

Use TestGrid to Combat Test Automation Challenges

Challenges in automation testing shouldn’t be seen as roadblocks—they’re signposts telling you where your processes need to change and which AI testing tools to use.

Low-code solutions continue to grow in popularity. Open source releases a new tool every week, and established commercial solutions are doing a great job, too. TestGrid brings value, usability, and functionality into your tech stack.

It simplifies and accelerates automation testing by providing a cloud-based, end-to-end solution for web and mobile (hybrid and native) testing. You can test your app on various devices and browsers without investing in expensive infrastructure.

It also supports a variety of testing frameworks and integrates smoothly with CI/CD pipelines, enabling faster release cycles.

With CoTester, the world’s first AI testing agent, you can write test cases for your website and web app, debug on the go, and execute them on real browsers of your choice—all based on testing scenarios and user stories you provide.

To try out its benefits yourself, sign up for TestGrid for free.

Frequently Asked Questions