Why End-to-End Testing Fails in Microservice Architectures

End-to-end testing is often described as the ultimate safety net for modern software systems. In theory, it validates real user workflows across all components and ensures that the system behaves correctly as a whole. In practice, however, end-to-end testing frequently fails to deliver reliable value in microservice architectures. Teams invest heavily in E2E suites, only to face slow pipelines, flaky tests, and low confidence in test results.