Playwright vs Cypress, which to choose?

So, you are starting a automation framework, and you have to choose between Playwright and Cypress. Which one should you choose? Let’s see it.

Playwright

Playwright is backed by Microsoft and it’s a powerful tool for browser automation. In my opinion, it has some great advantatges:

• It has parallel execution on premises. Which Cypress only allow on the official platform.
• The Fixtures enforce good practices on test isolation.
• If you care, it is available in more programming languages than Cypress.
• The VSCode extension is really good.

Overall, I would say that Playwright is better in big projects that may end up scaling a lot.

On the other hand, it has some disadvantages:

• It has a steeper learning curve than Cypress.
• It is more easy to jack, hard to master than Cypress.

Cypress

Cypress is a project from Cypress.io, so it is not backed by a big company like Playwright. Nonetheless, it gained a lot of traction in the last years, and took the place of one of most popular tool for browser automation. Cypress has a particularity, which is the cy interface, that is really easy to use and understand, but may seem odd for those who are used to Se So, to me, the advantages of Cypress are:

• It has a really easy learning curve.
• It has a lot of plugins. Nonetheless, they may cause problems at the time of importing them.
• It has component testing support for longer that Playwright.

On the other hand, it has some disadvantages:

• It has no parallel execution on premises.

In my opinion, Cypress is better for small projects that may not scale a lot.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I would say that if you are starting a big project, you should go with Playwright. If you are starting a small project, you should go with Cypress. It is also important no note that both have rich debugging tools, and both have a really good community support.

Nonetheless, until Cypress allows parallel execution on premises, Playwright will have a great pro that no plugin, addon or feature can match.

If you want it, you can also check each project’s numbers:

Comparison Table (November 2024)

Feature Overview (November 2024)