Cypress vs Playwright

How to Choose Between Cypress and Playwright?

@ Software Testing

Introduction

Web E2E testing often mentions two options: Cypress and Playwright, both of which I’ve tried. While I prefer Playwright overall, there are more factors to consider when choosing the right testing tool, so I will document the details I care about and the reasons for my choices.

  • Cypress🔗: Released in 2017. Not only limited to testing framework, but has also expanded into a platform that provides a complete overview of testing performance and offers an integrated monitoring dashboard (Cypress Cloud SasS🔗).
  • Playwright🔗: Released in 2020. Playwright is supported by Microsoft and goes beyond the JavaScript ecosystem, supporting more programming languages.

Differences between Cypress and Playwright that I care about

  • The parallelization functionality in Cypress is built into their Cypress Cloud SaaS🔗 service. While there are some alternatives, they are not perfect. In contrast, Playwright tests are handled by external Node.js and are naturally easier to execute tests in parallel due to isolation from the browser.
  • Cypress is still in the testing phase for Safari🔗, whereas Playwright natively supports any browser.
  • Cypress is generally slower🔗.
  • Cypress has a mature ecosystem and community, while Playwright is newer, smaller, but rapidly growing.

Underlying Details

  • Cypress is fully positioned in automated browser testing, while Playwright can generally be used for both E2E testing and web scraping purposes.
  • Cypress is based on Electron App🔗 and injects into the browser execution loop, while Playwright is based on Chrome DevTools Protocol🔗
    • Cypress is limited to the JavaScript ecosystem, while Playwright supports multiple languages.

Conclusion

  • I dont’t like of Cypress putting some advanced features behind a paywall, but it is clear that they focus on solving web testing problems and are launching additional paid features for web testing.

  • Although the Playwright🔗 community is relatively small, according to the JavaScript Survey 2024🔗 statistics, it has great potential, and most articles generally conclude in favor of recommending Playwright. Aside from the slightly verbose syntax and smaller community, there isn’t much to criticize.

I have more experience using Cypress, so I compare from that standpoint. Unless I want to particularly integrate certain packages from specific ecosystems, I will likely choose Playwright for its fast and good development experience, openness, and community growth trends.

Further Reading