Testing Kibana plugins [testing-kibana-plugins]

Kibana plugins are tested at three levels. Each level has a different scope, speed, and tooling:

Level	Scope	Tools	When to use
Unit	A single function, class, or component in isolation	Jest + mocks	Fast, exhaustive coverage of logic and edge cases
Integration	Interactions between systems (HTTP APIs, Elasticsearch, plugin contracts)	Jest + TestUtils or FTR	Verifying real behavior without full browser
End-to-end (E2E)	User-facing behavior through the browser or HTTP	Scout (Playwright)	Validating complete user flows and UI interactions

Follow the testing pyramid: many unit tests, fewer integration tests, and a small number of E2E tests.

Unit and integration tests

Use Jest for unit and integration tests:

• Unit tests — test logic in isolation with mocks
• Integration tests — test against real Kibana or Elasticsearch instances

End-to-end tests with Scout

Scout is Kibana's modern E2E test framework built on Playwright. Use it for UI and API tests.

• What is Scout — overview, packages, and FAQ
• Set up Scout in your plugin — add Scout to your plugin or package
• Run Scout tests — start servers and run tests locally

Core concepts:

• Fixtures
• Page objects
• API services
• Parallelism
• Deployment tags
• Global setup hook

How-to guides:

• Write UI tests
• Write API tests
• Debug test runs
• Browser authentication
• API authentication
• Accessibility checks
• Skip tests
• Feature flags in tests

Legacy functional tests (FTR)

The Functional Test Runner (FTR) is Kibana's legacy E2E framework. Existing FTR tests continue to run, and teams can migrate incrementally to Scout.

• Functional Test Runner — when to use FTR, how it works, and migration guidance

External plugins

If you're testing a plugin developed outside the Kibana repository, see Testing Kibana plugins in the Tutorials section.