Features

• Vite's config, transformers, resolvers, and plugins
• Use the same setup from your app to run the tests!
• Smart & instant watch mode, like HMR for tests!
• Component testing for Vue, React, Svelte, Lit, Marko and more
• Out-of-the-box TypeScript / JSX support
• ESM first, top level await
• Workers multi-threading via Tinypool
• Benchmarking support with Tinybench
• Filtering, timeouts, concurrent for suite and tests
• Workspace support
• Jest-compatible Snapshot
• Chai built-in for assertions + Jest expect compatible APIs
• Tinyspy built-in for mocking
• happy-dom or jsdom for DOM mocking
• Browser Mode for running component tests in the browser
• Code coverage via v8 or istanbul
• Rust-like in-source testing
• Type Testing via expect-type
• Sharding support

Learn how to write your first test by Video

Shared Config between Test, Dev and Build

Vite's config, transformers, resolvers, and plugins. Use the same setup from your app to run the tests.

Learn more at Configuring Vitest.

Watch Mode

$ vitest

When you modify your source code or the test files, Vitest smartly searches the module graph and only reruns the related tests, just like how HMR works in Vite!

vitest starts in watch mode by default in development environment and run mode in CI environment (when process.env.CI presents) smartly. You can use vitest watch or vitest run to explicitly specify the desired mode.

Start Vitest with the --standalone flag to keep it running in the background. It won't run any tests until they change. Vitest will not run tests if the source code is changed until the test that imports the source has been run

Common Web Idioms Out-Of-The-Box

Out-of-the-box ES Module / TypeScript / JSX support / PostCSS

Threads

By default Vitest runs test files in multiple processes using node:child_process via Tinypool (a lightweight fork of Piscina), allowing tests to run simultaneously. If you want to speed up your test suite even further, consider enabling --pool=threads to run tests using node:worker_threads (beware that some packages might not work with this setup).

To run tests in a single thread or process, see poolOptions.

Vitest also isolates each file's environment so env mutations in one file don't affect others. Isolation can be disabled by passing --no-isolate to the CLI (trading correctness for run performance).

Test Filtering

Vitest provides many ways to narrow down the tests to run in order to speed up testing so you can focus on development.

Learn more about Test Filtering.

Running Tests Concurrently

Use .concurrent in consecutive tests to start them in parallel.

import { describe, it } from 'vitest'

// The two tests marked with concurrent will be started in parallel
describe('suite', () => {
  it('serial test', async () => { /* ... */ })
  it.concurrent('concurrent test 1', async ({ expect }) => { /* ... */ })
  it.concurrent('concurrent test 2', async ({ expect }) => { /* ... */ })
})

If you use .concurrent on a suite, every test in it will be started in parallel.

import { describe, it } from 'vitest'

// All tests within this suite will be started in parallel
describe.concurrent('suite', () => {
  it('concurrent test 1', async ({ expect }) => { /* ... */ })
  it('concurrent test 2', async ({ expect }) => { /* ... */ })
  it.concurrent('concurrent test 3', async ({ expect }) => { /* ... */ })
})

You can also use .skip, .only, and .todo with concurrent suites and tests. Read more in the API Reference.

WARNING

When running concurrent tests, Snapshots and Assertions must use expect from the local Test Context to ensure the right test is detected.

Snapshot

Jest-compatible snapshot support.

import { expect, it } from 'vitest'

it('renders correctly', () => {
  const result = render()
  expect(result).toMatchSnapshot()
})

Learn more at Snapshot.

Chai and Jest expect Compatibility

Chai is built-in for assertions with Jest expect-compatible APIs.

Notice that if you are using third-party libraries that add matchers, setting test.globals to true will provide better compatibility.

Mocking

Tinyspy is built-in for mocking with jest-compatible APIs on vi object.

import { expect, vi } from 'vitest'

const fn = vi.fn()

fn('hello', 1)

expect(vi.isMockFunction(fn)).toBe(true)
expect(fn.mock.calls[0]).toEqual(['hello', 1])

fn.mockImplementation((arg: string) => arg)

fn('world', 2)

expect(fn.mock.results[1].value).toBe('world')

Vitest supports both happy-dom or jsdom for mocking DOM and browser APIs. They don't come with Vitest, you will need to install them separately:

$ npm i -D happy-dom
# or
$ npm i -D jsdom

After that, change the environment option in your config file:

// vitest.config.ts
import { defineConfig } from 'vitest/config'

export default defineConfig({
  test: {
    environment: 'happy-dom', // or 'jsdom', 'node'
  },
})

Learn more at Mocking.

Coverage

Vitest supports Native code coverage via v8 and instrumented code coverage via istanbul.

{
  "scripts": {
    "test": "vitest",
    "coverage": "vitest run --coverage"
  }
}

Learn more at Coverage.

In-Source Testing

Vitest also provides a way to run tests within your source code along with the implementation, similar to Rust's module tests.

This makes the tests share the same closure as the implementations and able to test against private states without exporting. Meanwhile, it also brings the feedback loop closer for development.

// src/index.ts

// the implementation
export function add(...args: number[]): number {
  return args.reduce((a, b) => a + b, 0)
}

// in-source test suites
if (import.meta.vitest) {
  const { it, expect } = import.meta.vitest
  it('add', () => {
    expect(add()).toBe(0)
    expect(add(1)).toBe(1)
    expect(add(1, 2, 3)).toBe(6)
  })
}

Learn more at In-source testing.

Benchmarking Experimental

You can run benchmark tests with bench function via Tinybench to compare performance results.

import { bench, describe } from 'vitest'

describe('sort', () => {
  bench('normal', () => {
    const x = [1, 5, 4, 2, 3]
    x.sort((a, b) => {
      return a - b
    })
  })

  bench('reverse', () => {
    const x = [1, 5, 4, 2, 3]
    x.reverse().sort((a, b) => {
      return a - b
    })
  })
})

Type Testing Experimental

You can write tests to catch type regressions. Vitest comes with expect-type package to provide you with a similar and easy to understand API.

import { assertType, expectTypeOf, test } from 'vitest'
import { mount } from './mount.js'

test('my types work properly', () => {
  expectTypeOf(mount).toBeFunction()
  expectTypeOf(mount).parameter(0).toMatchTypeOf<{ name: string }>()

  // @ts-expect-error name is a string
  assertType(mount({ name: 42 }))
})

Sharding

Run tests on different machines using --shard and --reporter=blob flags. All test and coverage results can be merged at the end of your CI pipeline using --merge-reports command:

vitest --shard=1/2 --reporter=blob
vitest --shard=2/2 --reporter=blob
vitest --merge-reports --reporter=junit --coverage.reporter=text

See Improving Performance | Sharding for more information.

Environment Variables

Vitest exclusively autoloads environment variables prefixed with VITE_ from .env files to maintain compatibility with frontend-related tests, adhering to Vite's established convention. To load every environmental variable from .env files anyway, you can use loadEnv method imported from vite:

import { loadEnv } from 'vite'
import { defineConfig } from 'vitest/config'

export default defineConfig(({ mode }) => ({
  test: {
    // mode defines what ".env.{mode}" file to choose if exists
    env: loadEnv(mode, process.cwd(), ''),
  },
}))