Difference between Smoke Testing and SanityTesting

Smoke testing originated in the hardware testing practice of turning on a new piece of hardware for the first time and considering it a success if it does not catch fire and smoke. In software industry, smoke testing is a shallow and wide approach whereby all areas of the application without getting into too deep, is tested.


A sanity test is a narrow regression test that focuses on one or a few areas of functionality. Sanity testing is usually narrow and deep.



Smoke Testing:
Smoke testing is done at the start of the application is deployed. Smoke test is the entry point for the entire test execution. When the application is passed under the smoke test then only further system testing or regression testing can be carried out.

In general smoke testing is done when the higher version of the build is deployed and is done at each and every time the build is deployed. In smoke testing the main functionalites are tested and the stability of the system is validated.

Sanity Testing:
Sanity testing is also similar to Smoke testing, but has some minor differences. Sanity testing is done when the application is deployed into testing for the very first time and in smoke testing only positive scenarios are validated but in sanity testing both the positive and negative scenarios are validated.

For example, if the new software is crashing systems every 5 minutes, bogging down systems to a crawl, or destroying databases, the software may not be in a 'sane' enough condition to warrant further testing in its current state.

Sanity testing:We will check the complete functionality of the application

Smoke Testing: We will check the basic functionality of the application