For end to end testing, open source tools are absolutely capable and widely used in real projects, but they come with trade-offs. Tools like Selenium, Playwright, Cypress, and others give teams full control, flexibility, and deep CI/CD integrations without vendor lock-in, which makes them great for engineering-driven teams. The downside is they often require more setup and maintenance, and tests can get flaky if not designed well.

Paid tools, on the other hand, usually make life easier by offering built-in reporting, dashboards, easier test creation, and support, which is helpful if you want less engineering overhead or involvement from non-technical testers. The cost and sometimes limited flexibility are the trade-offs there.

In practice, many teams end up with a hybrid strategy: open source for core automation and fast CI runs, and paid tools where advanced reporting, ease of use, or enterprise compliance matters. The real goal is not tool purity — it’s confidence in your critical user flows with minimal maintenance pain.

If you want a practical, non-technical way to think about what end-to-end testing should cover and how it fits into your development process, this guide explains it clearly:
[https://keploy.io/blog/community/end-to-end-testing-guide