It depends on the situation (app and specific test you are interested in) - sometimes it is easier to create a new user and do the test on it - sometimes just for UI it is simpler to mock list responses and check how they look - sometimes it is easier to call api method to remove test data But also mind, if you do "clear db" in before tests within Cypress, you won't be able to run tests in parallel, because some befores will interfere with tests on other machines