Smoke testing

Smoke testing is a small, fast set of tests that checks the most important functions of a build work at all, such as the app starting, users logging in and key pages loading. If a smoke test fails, the build is rejected before deeper testing starts.

Smoke vs sanity vs regression testing

• Smoke: broad and shallow. Is the build stable enough to test?
• Sanity: narrow and focused. Does a specific fix or feature work?
• Regression: wide and deep. Did anything that used to work break? See regression testing.

Tips for a good smoke suite

• Keep it short, a few minutes at most, so it can run on every deploy.
• Cover the critical user paths, not edge cases.
• Run it automatically after each deployment to staging and production.
• Fail fast: stop the pipeline on the first smoke failure.

Read the full guide: Selenium vs Playwright 2026 — Which Gets You Hired Faster?