Playwright vs Selenium: key differences in 2024

Choosing the right web automation tool is crucial for improving your product’s quality and development process.

It can also reduce cost, ensure robustness, and support agile workflow.

Here we’ll take a closer look at two powerful options: Playwright and Selenium. 

If you’re a developer or tester, this comparison can help you make a better choice for your project.

We’ll discuss the strengths and weaknesses of Playwright and Selenium, helping you understand when to use each tool. 

Whether you’re focused on execution speed, ease of integration, or language compatibility, we’ve got you covered. 

By the end of this blog, you’ll have the knowledge to choose the right tool for your project needs. So let’s get to it!

What is Playwright?

Playwright is an open-source automation framework by Microsoft that supports testing across all major browsers with a single API.

It’s designed for testing from a browser’s perspective, offering features like auto-wait, network interception, and emulation capabilities for mobile browsers.  

Playwright integrates WebSocket technology, which is essential for real-time web communication between clients and servers.

This enables tests to mimic and verify complex, interactive web applications efficiently. 

This capability is important for apps relying on instant data exchange, enhancing the framework’s utility in creating robust, reliable test scripts for a wide range of web applications.

source: Testomat

Let’s take a look at the basic task of automating a form submission with Playwright in Python:

from playwright.sync_api import sync_playwright
def run(playwright):
    browser = playwright.chromium.launch()
    page = browser.new_page()
    page.goto('https://example.com')
    page.fill('#name', 'John Doe')
    page.click('#submit-button')
    browser.close()
with sync_playwright() as playwright:
    run(playwright)

This snippet demonstrates launching a browser, navigating to a URL, filling out a form, and clicking a submit button.

Playwright’s Python API mirrors its Node.js counterpart, offering an intuitive and powerful way to interact with web pages programmatically.

Playwright pros and cons

What is Selenium?

Selenium is a well-known framework in the world of web testing, offering tools for browser automation. 

It allows testers to write scripts in various programming languages and run tests on multiple browsers and platforms.

source: BrowserStack

Known for its WebDriver API, Selenium provides a way to automate web browser actions, making it easier to test web applications by simulating how a user would interact with them.

It’s not just about testing functionality; Selenium also supports a range of testing needs, from simple unit tests to complex functional testing scenarios. 

The framework integrates well with other tools, enabling continuous integration and testing workflows. 

Its extensive community support and documentation make it a go-to choice for testers looking for a reliable and versatile testing solution.

Here’s how you might automate the same form submission task using Selenium with Python:

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
driver = webdriver.Chrome('/path/to/chromedriver')
driver.get("https://example.com")
element = driver.find_element(By.ID, "name")
element.send_keys("John Doe")
driver.find_element(By.ID, "submit-button").click()
driver.quit()

This code snippet highlights Selenium’s approach to browser automation, where you manually navigate to pages, find elements, and interact with them.

It showcases Selenium’s flexibility and control over browser interactions.

Selenium pros and cons 

Playwright vs Selenium: comparison 

When deciding between Playwright and Selenium, your choice should align with your specific project requirements.

Here’s a breakdown of their features:

Now, let’s take a closer look at each of these features.

Cross-browser support

• Playwright

Playwright supports Chromium, WebKit, and Firefox, allowing you to run tests on Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Safari.

Also, it ensures compatibility with the latest browser versions by using builds directly from browser repositories.

Playwright also has built-in support for parallel test execution on multiple browsers at the same time.

• Selenium

Selenium supports testing on a wide range of browsers including Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Edge, and Safari.

It offers comprehensive browser support but may lag behind Playwright in supporting the latest browser features​.

And while it doesn’t have built-in support for parallel testing like Playwright, you can do it via third-party solutions like Selenium Grid.

Final verdict: Selenium has the edge because it supports more browsers, including less common and legacy browsers, although it lags behind when it comes to the latest browser features.

Language support

• Playwright

Playwright officially supports JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, C#, and Java.

And it provides a unified API across all supported languages, so test behavior is consistent regardless of the language you use.

• Selenium

Selenium supports Java, C#, Ruby, Python, JavaScript, and Kotlin.

This broad language support is one of its main strengths and makes it a good choice for teams who use a variety of programming languages.

Final verdict: Selenium has the edge because it supports a broader range of languages, including Ruby and Kotlin, which Playwright doesn’t support.

Performance

• Playwright

Playwright has auto-waiting mechanisms, which reduce the need for manual waits and make tests more reliable.

And it’s significantly faster and offers better performance than Selenium.

• Selenium

Selenium’s performance varies depending on how you configure your browser and WebDriver.

Recent updates have improved performance, but Playwright generally has more built-in features that optimize test execution.

Final verdict: Playwright takes the win here, as it’s much faster and offers significantly better performance than Selenium.

Debugging capabilities

• Playwright

Playwright has powerful debugging tools like the Playwright Inspector, which allows step-by-step execution and inspection of tests.

Also, it has built-in support for live debugging in VS Code and comprehensive trace and video recording capabilities.

• Selenium

Debugging in Selenium often involves using browser developer tools and logging – integration with IDEs and debugging tools is not as seamless as Playwright.

And while it provides basic support for taking screenshots and capturing logs, it lacks built-in video and tracing.

Final verdict: Playwright is the clear winner because of its advanced built-in debugging tools and trace and video recording capabilities.

CI/CD integration

• Playwright

Playwright easily integrates with popular CI/CD systems like GitHub Actions, CircleCI, and Jenkins.

It also provides Docker images and supports running tests in headless mode, which helps with seamless CI/CD pipeline integration.

• Selenium

Selenium is well-established in CI/CD environments with plugins and extensions for Jenkins, Bamboo, and other CI tools.

And it supports running tests in Docker containers and headless modes.

Final verdict: Playwright has the edge because it easily integrates with popular CI/CD systems without needing plugins or extensions.

Community and support

• Playwright

Backed by Microsoft, Playwright is frequently updated.

It has a growing community with comprehensive documentation, examples, a dedicated support forum, and a rapidly expanding ecosystem of tools and plugins.

• Selenium

Selenium is a long-standing, widely adopted tool with a large and active community.

It has extensive documentation, numerous tutorials and community-contributed resources, as well as a strong ecosystem with a huge number of tools and libraries.

Final verdict: Selenium beats out Playwright because it’s a well-established tool with a larger community, although Playwright is slowly catching up.

When should you use Selenium?

• If you need to support a broad range of browsers

Selenium is a good fit for projects that require extensive browser support, especially for legacy browsers like Internet Explorer. 

It provides WebDriver implementations for a huge number of browsers, which is why it should be your go-to tool for comprehensive cross-browser testing.

This extensive cross-browser support reduces the risk of browser-specific issues cropping up.

• If your team uses multiple programming languages

Selenium supports Java, C#, Python, Ruby, JavaScript, and Kotlin, so teams can write tests in their preferred programming language.

This flexibility is especially useful for teams who are skilled in multiple languages or work on codebases with different languages.

And the consistent API across these languages ensures your test suite can be maintained and extended regardless of language.

• If you want to integrate with a mature ecosystem

Selenium’s long history and strong community mean that it has a variety of plugins, frameworks, and tools available to improve its functionality. 

This ecosystem simplifies many aspects of test automation, from grid setups to reporting and CI/CD integration​.

And community resources like forums, documentation, and tutorials are invaluable for troubleshooting and learning and allow new users to get up to speed quickly.

When should you use Playwright?

• If you’re testing modern web apps

Playwright excels in handling modern web technologies, including single-page apps (SPAs) and dynamic content. 

It offers features like auto-waiting for elements and actions, which solves common issues like flakiness in tests.

And its ability to efficiently handle multiple contexts and parallel tests makes it ideal for complex web apps that need to be thoroughly tested across different user scenarios and states​.

• If you need cross-browser and cross-platform consistency

Playwright supports Chromium, WebKit, and Firefox, so your tests run consistently across different browsers – this is key for finding and fixing browser-specific issues early in the development cycle.

It also provides native support for mobile emulation, so you can test mobile-specific features and responsive designs without additional tools or configurations.

• If you want seamless CI/CD integration

As we mentioned before, Playwright easily integrates with CI/CD tools like GitHub Actions, CircleCI, and Jenkins.

And its detailed HTML reports, video recordings, and trace logs allow you to easily monitor and analyze test results in CI environments.

This helps you quickly identify and address any issues that might happen.

• If you need advanced debugging and testing tools

Playwright has advanced debugging tools like the Playwright Inspector, which significantly reduce the time needed to diagnose and fix test failures​.

Its integrated trace viewer captures detailed execution logs, screenshots, and videos.

This gives you deeper insights into why a test failed and makes it easier to solve those issues.

Playwright vs Selenium: FAQs

Conclusion

Both Playwright and Selenium offer powerful solutions for web app testing, each with its unique strengths and considerations.

Choosing between them will depends on your specific project needs, team skills, and the types of apps you’re testing.

If you want to learn more, take a look at external resources like the official documentation for Playwright and Selenium – or, read our other blogs on quality assurance and test automation tools.