Selenium vs. Playwright: A Comparison of Web Automation Tools

What is Selenium?

Selenium is not a single tool but a suite of tools, each with its own characteristics and use cases. It originated in 2004 when Jason Huggins, working at ThoughtWorks, developed a JavaScript library that could drive page interactions and automate browser testing. This library eventually became the core of Selenium, serving as the foundation for Selenium RC (Remote Control) and Selenium IDE. Selenium RC was groundbreaking as it allowed developers to control browsers using their preferred programming languages.

What is Playwright?

Additionally, it supports Google Chrome, Firefox, and WebKit, and offers mobile support. Playwright can be run on different operating systems like Windows, Linux, and macOS. The execution of scripts can be done synchronously or asynchronously.

Selenium vs Playwright: What are Their Differences?

Although Selenium and Playwright share some common features, there are notable differences between the two tools:

Multiple Browsers: Playwright supports multiple browser engines, including Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit. Selenium also supports multiple browsers, but its support is limited to Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, and Edge. It is important to note that Playwright provides consistent rendering across browsers like Chrome, Opera, and the new version of Edge.

Cross-Platform Testing: Both Selenium and Playwright can run tests on multiple platforms, including Windows, macOS, and Linux. However, their approaches to cross-platform testing differ. Selenium relies on the WebDriver protocol, which is a standard API for automating web browsers. Each browser vendor provides its own WebDriver API implementation, resulting in potential behavioral differences across platforms. This means that when using Selenium, developers may need to write platform-specific code to handle these differences.

Playwright offers a unified API that works consistently across all platforms. It abstracts the underlying browser implementation details, allowing developers to write the same test code and expect consistent behavior across platforms. Playwright also supports both headless and non-headless modes on all platforms, providing flexibility in running tests on platforms without a graphical user interface.

Automatic Waiting: Playwright has built-in automatic waiting functionality, which means it waits for elements to appear on the page before interacting with them. Selenium requires developers to explicitly add wait settings in their tests to handle waiting issues. However, it's worth noting that manual waiting may still be required in certain scenarios when using Playwright.

Syntax: Selenium uses a lower-level API that requires developers to write more code to interact with elements on web pages. For example, to click a button using Selenium, developers need to locate the button element and then invoke the click() method. Playwright, on the other hand, provides a higher-level API that simplifies the interaction with elements on web pages. For example, to click a button using Playwright, developers can directly use the click() method on the element object.

Performance: In terms of performance, Playwright outperforms Selenium. Playwright utilizes a single browser instance to run tests, reducing the overhead of creating and destroying browser instances. On the other hand, Selenium creates a new browser instance for each test, which can slow down the execution speed of tests.

Conclusion

Selenium vs Playwright, which one is better? Both Selenium and Playwright are powerful tools for automating web tests. While they share some similarities, they differ in terms of browser support, cross-platform testing, waiting mechanisms, syntax, and performance. The choice between Selenium and Playwright depends on the specific requirements of the project and the preferences of the testing team. If you are looking for a simpler and faster way to automate your testing, welcome to WeTest Automation, which provides cloud-based mobile app testing services that are efficient and cost-effective.