Selenium

Selenium is the oldest major browser automation framework, launched in 2004 and still open source today. It remotely controls real browsers, making it the long-standing standard for automated web application testing. The project is supported by an active community rather than a single vendor.

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Selenium is primarily used in quality assurance: for regression tests before each release, cross-browser checks via Selenium Grid, as well as scraping and form automation. Its strength lies in its ecosystem — hardly any QA professional is unfamiliar with Selenium.

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Technically, its age is showing: Playwright, Microsoft's newer framework, automatically waits for elements, runs more stably, and is easier to debug. Selenium tests are considered maintenance-intensive and prone to sporadic failures if the timing isn't precisely implemented.

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Relevant for development teams with existing Selenium suites or exotic browser requirements. Those starting fresh today usually do better with Playwright, while for click automation in daily office tasks, UiPath is often preferred. Neither is for you without programming knowledge.