Playwright

Playwright is Microsoft's open-source framework for browser testing: an API for Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit, stable and fast.

Development & Data

What is Playwright?

Playwright is an open-source framework from Microsoft for browser automation and end-to-end testing, released in 2020. With a single API, you can control Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit, effectively covering Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari. It's developed by a team that previously worked on Google's Puppeteer, with new releases appearing monthly.

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Its primary application is automated testing of web apps: click paths, logins, and checkout flows are automatically verified with every release. Additionally, Playwright is suitable for scraping and browser agents. Its strength lies in its stability, as auto-waiting and the Trace Viewer significantly reduce the dreaded test flakiness.

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Compared to Selenium, Playwright is more modern and faster, but also newer. The Selenium ecosystem is larger, and only Selenium covers some legacy browsers. One thing is clear: you won't get anywhere with either without programming skills.

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It's the top choice for development teams starting with automated browser tests today. Business departments without developers are left out — for simple, no-code web automation, Zapier or Make are more suitable.

Functions

  • Trace Viewer with screenshots, logs, and a timeline for each test run
  • Codegen: Record tests by clicking in the browser
  • Parallel execution and test isolation via browser contexts
  • Significantly fewer flaky tests than with Selenium thanks to built-in wait logic
  • Popular foundation for scraping and browser agents
  • Free and Open Source under Apache License
  • Control Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit via a single API
  • Libraries for TypeScript, JavaScript, Python, Java, and C#
  • Auto-Waiting: automatically waits until elements are ready
  • Network mocking and request interception in tests
  • Headless and headed operation, even in CI pipelines
Development & Data
Complexity
Hard

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