An effective Testing process is the most determining factor for an application’s successful performance. Any error that escapes the testing will reduce the service quality of the application. To overcome this the only possible way is to have the most appropriate automated testing tool. A lot of web automated testing tools are available that make your task easy and save you time.

They allow QA teams to adopt low-code or scriptless test automation, by eliminating the need to rely on written code. They also facilitate faster and leaner application releases. Depending on your need you can find free tools or Paid automation tools.

In this article, we will discuss the two most popular automation tools: Selenium and Playwright. Both are well-known and established open-source testing frameworks. They are comprehensive solutions and a good choice to go with for automated testing. But in detail, there are a lot of differences among them. That is what we will be discussing here. We will see how Playwright is getting better than Selenium in some areas, and how Selenium is much better than playwright in many areas.

Now you must be wondering how to choose between Selenium and Playwright. For that, we are going to discuss each in detail so that you get a better idea about their similarities as well as differences in many aspects. So, let’s first start with Selenium and later we will proceed to Playwright. We will also compare their features to help you decide which one you should choose depending on your testing requirements.

Selenium

Selenium is the most popular, most preferred open-source tool and de facto standard that has been ruling for more than a decade now for automating a browser programmatically. It is the easiest library to use and it perfectly gets the job done. It is a must-have tool in the tool belt if you are a professional automation tester.

Selenium is a suite of tools comprising three components. They are:

Selenium WebDriver – It is a browser-specific driver that directly communicates with the browsers by accepting the commands and sending them to the browser. It supports various programming languages like – Java, C#, Python, Perl, Ruby, and JavaScript.

It also supports multiple Operating Systems like Windows, Mac OS, Linux, etc., and browsers like Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Safari, Opera, Android, iOS, and many more.

Selenium IDE (Integrated Development Environment) – This is a Firefox plugin that is used to record-and-playback scripts. It also allows quick test development for engineers as well as non-technical users.

Selenium Grid – The Grid is used to distribute and run tests in parallel on multiple machines against different browsers and operating systems.

Selenium is a widely used tool for browser automation, and it has a huge community of users. It automates browsers, interacts with UI elements, and imitates user actions to test the expected functionality of web applications. It is the most trusted and popular framework supporting large-scale cross-browser testing and ensuring seamless and consistent user experiences across multiple browsers and device combinations.

Selenium is actively developing and constantly releasing its newer updates and the latest major updated version is Selenium 4. It supports a wide range of browsers and all the major programming languages, thus allowing the testers the flexibility to write test scripts in any programming language they are comfortable with.

Playwright

The playwright is a simple, fast, and reliable tool in the market for browser automation. This new open-source framework was first released by Microsoft and developed by the same team who created Puppeteer (a headless testing framework for Chrome and Chromium) browsers only. However, Playwright goes beyond Puppeteer and provides wider coverage and support for multiple browsers like Chrome, Firefox, WebKit, etc. It also supports multiple programming languages such as Python, Java, and .NET C#, providing QAs with more options to write test scripts.

The playwright provides wide coverage, accuracy, and high speed, and is specially designed for performing cross-browser and cross-platform testing on complex applications, through its high-level API, thus allowing testers to control headless browsers. In other frameworks, testers need to write code for the wait explicitly, but Playwright includes a helpful auto wait feature that enables the testers to write concise test scripts easily. This auto wait feature performs all important checks for an element like whether the elements are performing as expected and the test results are more accurate.

This open-source tool is not built on Selenium, instead, it is completely a standalone solution. Screenshots, videos, and execution traces are some of its supported features.  It is intended for end-to-end automated testing of web apps, specifically engineered for the modern web, and generally runs very quickly, even for complex testing projects. To scale up testing it also allows simultaneous test execution. This is useful when multiple web pages need to be tested simultaneously.

The playwright is far newer than Selenium, but it is picking up competition quickly and growing actively. Being a newcomer, it supports fewer browsers/languages than Selenium, but a newer feature it includes is the latest and is more capable to align with the modern web.

Above we have already discussed the two open-source tools, Playwright, the newest addition to Automation Framework. And Selenium is the most preferred tool that has been with us for more than a decade now.

Now to make your concept clear let’s have a detailed comparison of the features they provide.

Comparing Features of Selenium and Playwright

• Languages

Starting with the comparison of languages supported by each one, it is not surprising that Selenium supports more languages than Playwright. Supported languages by Selenium are Python, Java, JavaScript, C#, Ruby, and PHP. Whereas Playwright supports fewer programming languages than Selenium but it handles most of the languages that are used today. Playwright supports JavaScript / TypeScript, Java, Python, C#.

• Browsers

With the languages, Selenium has taken the lead in terms of browser support being older. But Playwright maintains the most common ones. Selenium-supported browsers are Chrome, Firefox, IE, Edge Chromium (Selenium 4), Safari, and Opera. In contrast, Playwright is limited to just Chromium, Chrome, Firefox, Webkit, and Edge.

• Page Object Model

Here there is not much to differentiate between the two. The Page Object Model design pattern can be implemented by using Playwright as well as Selenium.

• Alerts

The way to handle the dialogues is something where the difference is huge. From my point of view, the difference in this aspect is that Selenium manages dialogues more naturally. It displays alerts during script execution making interaction easy. In the case of Playwright, the alerts by default get auto-discarded.

• Runner Solutions

Playwright comes with its runner solution, while Selenium requires an external runner to use.

• Drag & Drop Support

In this category, Playwright provides the easiest approach. It provides a simple function with the specification of a draggable selector and drops area selector. Selenium is not that easy to use. It programmatically defines a drag item, and a drop source and then creates a custom action to move and drop the item to its destination.

• Parallel Test Execution

Parallel tests speed up test execution, and both tools can fulfill this requirement. With Playwright, you can run tests in parallel. Selenium also can do so by using third-party solutions such as TestNG.

• Video Recording and Screenshots

Test execution recording and screen capturing help in better documentation and less flakiness in interpreting test failures. Comparing the two in this category both are a good fit. Playwright brings huge flexibility and comes with these capabilities out of the box. And for Selenium, there are extensions available.

• Real Devices Support

In this feature Playwright does not support real devices; it can only handle emulators. Whereas Selenium Supports real device clouds and Mobile Testing is also available using Appium.

• Multi Tab Support

In this aspect both support tests with multiple tabs. Hence, here both Selenium and Playwright are a good fit.

• Technology Stack

In this category, both Selenium and Playwright are better choices because they both have APIs for multiple languages.

So which one you should use Selenium or Playwright for Test Automation

Now that you know both Selenium and Playwright serve as web automation tools, they have their own strengths and weaknesses. This means choosing between them is subjective to the need they will be used for. You must check your testing requirement and research your options before deciding on a winner.

It is also important to understand whether you need a wider array of browser/language support. Or a long track record of support and active development is required? Is test execution speed vital?

Assess all these requirements then decide accordingly which is the most suitable one. Because, depending on your needs, either one could serve you best.

Almost everyone sitting in an interview knows Selenium but there is no harm in learning a newer technology like Playwright. Both have a number of aspects going for them. As a new arrival Playwright lacks support on various levels such as community, browsers, real devices, language options, and integrations whereas Selenium serves you all.

Selenium is an excellent tool that has been with us for many years and has remained unchallenged in test automation tools. Although it has faced new competitors, Selenium continues as the preferred one. Playwright offers fast testing in complex web applications but has limited coverage. Selenium offers strong community support along with wider test coverage, scalability, and flexibility.

Thus, depending on the task requirements and the priorities you can choose one among these two testing frameworks. When the architecture is very complex with limited coverage, then Playwright is the option to select for testing. In a scenario that requires more comprehensive coverage, Selenium is the best bet.

Run Selenium tests with Lambda Test

No matter which test automation framework you choose, cross-browser testing is compulsory. It is the only way to guarantee that the website is performing seamlessly with consistent UX regardless of which device and browser are used to access them.

Emulators and simulators simply cannot offer the real user environment that the application must be tested in. Hence consider testing websites and apps on a real device cloud, preferably one that offers the latest devices, browsers, and OS versions. This applies to both manual testing and automation testing.

Lambda Test is one such platform that provides a cloud of more than 3000 real devices, browsers, and operating systems with their combinations for instant, on-demand testing at scale. Using Lambda Test, you can run automated tests using frameworks like Selenium, Playwright, Puppeteer, Cypress and more.

It is a scalable, secure, and reliable cross-browser compatibility testing platform that offers a cloud for Selenium automated testing and Playwright automation, which can further be fast-tracked with hassle-free parallel testing. The cloud can also be integrated with popular CI/CD tools such as Jira, Jenkins, Team City, and many more. Additionally, its in-built debugging feature enables testers to catch and resolve bugs instantly.

CONCLUSION

Selenium has been around us for a very long time, and it is a very solid and popular tool to carry out automation testing. It also has a huge community of experts that helps a lot to solve any type of problem. Even though Playwright is relatively the youngest among the evaluated test automation tools. It has managed to overcome challenges where the other tools are struggling to provide easy solutions. It is loaded with new features that can meet your testing requirement.

So, in conclusion, it can be said that this article has provided a fair comparison of the two mentioned tools, including all the relevant aspects that could help in selecting one or the other.

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