Belitsoft Explains Why Playwright Is Better Than Selenium in 2025

Playwright has emerged as the test automation tool with the fastest growth rate in a matter of years. Nearly half of participants use Playwright more frequently than other tools, per community surveys. In 2025, Playwright will be the most widely used automation testing tool, surpassing Selenium in usage, according to TestGuild’s survey analysis. Playwright has become the go-to UI automation framework for many teams. Dedicated Playwright and Selenium engineers are among the full range of QA and DevOps services provided by the Belitsoft software development firm.

Market State

Playwright has more than 74,000 stars on GitHub, which is significantly more than Selenium’s 32,000. Although there are still a lot of projects relying on Selenium, Playwright is much less common (about 412,000 repositories use Playwright compared to 354,000 for Selenium).

Selenium’s lengthy history and enormous installed user base are advantages. It is still one of the most popular testing tools in the world and is a standard for web user interface testing in many businesses. Numerous test suites make use of it. Due to the extensive community and environment surrounding Selenium, which has grown over almost 20 years, there are numerous resources, integrations, and knowledgeable users throughout the sector. However, as teams look for quicker and more reliable alternatives, its overall share is decreasing.

Some of the main Selenium contributors even recognize Playwright’s advancements, describing its expansion as noteworthy. Both frameworks are freely available.

Adoption by Enterprise and Industry

Playwright is frequently used by startups and cloud-native SaaS companies because of its speed and current features in comparison to older Selenium setups. Playwright has been adopted or is set to be adopted by numerous teams.

Historically, larger Fortune 500 companies have standardized on Selenium because of its widespread support and maturity, but newer entrants like Playwright are gaining traction quickly in enterprise QA because of their improved capabilities and stability.

Conservative groups are also experimenting with it. Because of growing trust in the security and dependability of open-source QA solutions, highly regulated industries (fintech, healthcare, and finance) that previously might have stuck with more antiquated, tried-and-true tools are now assessing Playwright.

Many companies keep on to use broad Selenium test suites for legacy applications, even though Playwright has been adopted for new web apps. Microsoft’s support and a vibrant community reassure management that Playwright is not a dangerous experimental option.

Architecture and Performance

Selenium communicates with browsers via an additional server that sends HTTP messages and makes use of the W3C WebDriver protocol. Playwright avoids the HTTP layer by speaking the browser’s own protocol and maintaining an open WebSocket connection with the browser.

Playwright tests run more quickly as a result. According to one benchmark, a Playwright script completed the same task in about 290 ms compared to Selenium’s 536 ms (nearly twice as quickly).

Playwright can process dynamic, JavaScript-heavy pages more efficiently and without lag thanks to the reduced latency and efficient communication. Additionally, it is by default optimized for headless mode, which speeds up CI test runs even more.

While Selenium tests can also be run headless, although this has traditionally required additional setup, Playwright’s headless features are straightforward and integrated.

Playwright’s shorter test cycles and quicker execution have been commended by many users, which is a significant performance benefit for teams that require rapid feedback loops.

Support for Languages

Selenium is renowned for supporting a large number of languages. PHP, Python, Perl, Ruby, JavaScript/Node, C#, and Java are among the languages that can be employed to create Selenium scripts. Selenium was appropriate for many teams’ current tech stacks because of its versatility.

Because it is more recent, Playwright supports a slightly smaller range of languages: JavaScript/TypeScript at first, and now Python, Java, and.NET (C#) bindings. Most automation needs are covered by those languages, and Playwright’s API remains largely consistent across JavaScript, Python, Java, and C#. However, because Playwright does not have official support for Ruby or PHP, Selenium may still be a good option for companies that have made significant investments in these languages for their test scripts.

However, Playwright’s multilingual capabilities are sufficient for the majority of modern teams, and its layout makes it feel “native” in each of those languages. For instance, a Java company or a Python shop can use Playwright without altering their primary language, which is a significant benefit for large-scale projects. Playwright can fit into a variety of tech stacks thanks to its polyglot support and simple integration with different build systems (Node/NPM, PyPI, Maven, NuGet, etc.).

Although both tools cover the languages most frequently used in web development and test automation today, Selenium still leads in terms of total supported languages.

Platform Support and Browser Compatibility

Selenium’s extensive browser compatibility is a result of its long history and WebDriver-based methodology. Teams can utilize it to automate older browsers like Internet Explorer or Opera as well as Safari, Chrome/Chromium, Firefox, and Edge. Playwright concentrates on the three main browser engines available today: Mozilla’s Gecko (Firefox), WebKit (Safari’s engine), and Chromium (which includes Chrome, Edge, and any other Chromium-based browser). Although it doesn’t support outdated browsers like Internet Explorer 11, Playwright supports all of the major browsers that end users currently use. Since Internet Explorer is officially retired, most organizations in 2025 won’t care if it doesn’t support it. However, Selenium is the preferred tool for testing legacy browsers.

Playwright installs a compatible version of WebKit, Firefox, and Chromium for you. This technology doesn’t require external browser driver executables. Because the same script can run on all three engines with a single API and demands no additional setup, cross-browser testing is made simple. Selenium usually calls for installing or configuring a driver for each browser (such as ChromeDriver or GeckoDriver), even though Selenium Manager has recently begun automating the process. The consistency of Playwright can make maintenance and test code easier. Selenium supports specialized platforms like Solaris for remote execution, and both tools are cross-platform (supporting Windows, Linux, and macOS).

Configuration and Usability

Playwright was created with simplicity in mind. It uses an all-in-one strategy and a single API. With just one command (npm init playwright@latest for Node), you can install Playwright and begin writing tests in a matter of minutes. Playwright scaffolds a test project and downloads browsers automatically.

Although Selenium Manager now automatically downloads browser drivers, Selenium still needs more manual configuration. More significantly, Playwright automatically waits for conditions and elements by default, preventing instability brought on by timing problems. In contrast, Selenium depends on the user to use its explicit wait APIs or implement waits. Inadequate execution of Selenium tests may result in sporadic failures (e.g., attempting to click on an element before it loads).

Playwright scripts are typically short because the API was created to use fewer lines of code for routine operations, which makes tests simpler to read and update. All things considered, Playwright has a lower learning curve than Selenium.

Advanced Functionalities and API Features

The abundance of intricate features included in Playwright’s API is a major factor in developers’ preference for it. Playwright provides more precise control over browser behavior than Selenium. For example, Playwright can easily handle multiple tabs or browser contexts, mimic permissions or geolocation, and intercept network requests and responses (to test offline scenarios or stub APIs). Its direct use of browser DevTools protocols is responsible for many of these features. Although Selenium 4+ introduced some of these capabilities through WebDriver BiDi or the “Chrome DevTools” interface (for Chrome), Selenium WebDriver was more specific to the standard web automation commands.

Nevertheless, Playwright’s API is superior because it provides a comprehensive solution for more than just clicking links and completing forms; it also allows you to download and upload files, intercept network calls, and run API calls directly. APIs can also be tested with Playwright. You can use the same tool to test web pages and APIs because it enables your test to send HTTP requests and examine the responses. Testers would require a different library (such as RestAssured or requests) for Selenium to understand API calls. For end-to-end testing requirements, this combination of UI and API tests is appealing. To accomplish parallelism without requiring extra infrastructure, Playwright’s parallel test execution feature can run tests across workers concurrently or launch multiple browser contexts in a single process using its test runner.

Although Selenium can also operate in parallel, doing so usually necessitates configuring Selenium Grid or utilizing a cloud service to manage several processes, which is an additional expense that smaller teams might find prohibitive. Playwright’s concurrency design makes it simple for teams to scale up their test suites for quicker outcomes.

Types of Applications and Use Cases

The main purpose of Playwright and Selenium is to automate browser-based user interface testing. Web scraping or RPA scenarios, functional user interface testing, end-to-end testing, and web application regression testing are all included in this. Playwright’s handling of asynchronous events and dynamic content has made it particularly helpful for modern web apps (single page apps, highly interactive user interfaces). Playwright is used by teams developing React, Angular, or Vue applications because it was created with these frameworks in mind; testing dynamic interfaces is made much simpler by its robust element handling and automatic waiting. Such apps can also be tested with Selenium, though it frequently calls for more meticulous synchronization logic.

For web applications that need to function in Chrome, Firefox, and Safari, Playwright is a useful cross-browser testing tool. You can get consistency across these browsers with a single Playwright test. The ability to run nightly suites across multiple browsers without requiring a complicated grid setup is valued by businesses that oversee customer-facing web portals, such as banking websites or SaaS dashboards. However, because of its age, Selenium’s use cases can occasionally go further. For instance, if a team needs to automate an internal application that only functions in Internet Explorer or an older web application, Selenium is essentially the only option available (Playwright cannot automate IE).

Over the years, numerous custom frameworks and test harnesses have been developed on top of Selenium WebDriver, which is frequently the foundation for extensive integration test frameworks in businesses. These could create thorough reports, connect to legacy systems, or integrate with test management tools. It’s challenging to substitute Playwright for them right away. Selenium is still useful for projects that have a lot of legacy dependencies or where its broad language support and established community reputation are important considerations.

Debugging and Development Tools

Lastly, Playwright excels at debugging and authoring tools. After a failure, you can visually examine test run traces, snapshots, and console logs using the trace viewer that comes with it. Additionally, it features a code generator that can capture user input in a web browser and produce test code, which is an excellent method for troubleshooting selectors or bootstrapping tests.

The Selenium IDE, a browser extension that records scripts, is the equivalent of Selenium but is less feature-rich and not incorporated into the development processes of the majority of users. Debugging is also made much easier by Playwright’s built-in feature of recording test run videos and taking screenshots of failures.

Extended Capabilities for Testing

How do API and performance testing tools work with conventional UI automation? Teams can use Playwright’s API testing features to call REST/GraphQL endpoints, check for responses, and even integrate those calls with user interface (UI) interactions into a single test flow. This is not provided by Selenium. Testing APIs would be a different matter.

Tools like JMeter, Gatling, or K6 are more appropriate for performance testing because Playwright and Selenium are not made to produce thousands of requests per second. But in performance automation, both can be useful. Testers can measure browser memory usage, transaction durations, and page load times using Playwright or Selenium. Playwright can record performance metrics and even replicate high CPU or low bandwidth conditions because it has direct access to the internal workings of the browser.

Your CI pipeline can provide early insight into performance problems by incorporating basic performance checks using Playwright or Selenium. Furthermore, some frameworks permit the reuse of Playwright or Selenium scripts for load generation. This performs multiple browser test cases concurrently to simulate multiple users (although this is constrained by the high resource cost of real browsers). In many situations, Playwright is a little more practical for this than Selenium due to its effective parallelization and headless mode. Because it doesn’t require any additional setup to test across Chrome, Safari (WebKit), and Firefox simultaneously, Playwright is hailed as the ideal tool for cross-browser performance testing, particularly for modern web apps.

Capabilities for Mobile Testing

Through Appium, Selenium expands to support actual iOS/Android app automation for mobile device testing. Additionally, Selenium Grid enables testing on actual mobile devices in the cloud.

Playwright’s only out-of-the-box mobile support is mobile browser emulation. It replicates viewport sizes, geolocation, touch events, and other functions in a desktop browser engine. Without third-party tools, it is unable to directly control native mobile apps or actual mobile browsers. Nonetheless, Playwright’s mobile web coverage is fairly strong in online contexts; it can simulate gadgets and comes with a WebKit build for testing iPhones and iPads, covering a variety of responsive design test scenarios.

Selenium (with Appium) may still be required for enterprises that require true on-device mobile automation.

However, Playwright’s integrated cross-browser support is extensive and incredibly practical for web apps that run in both desktop and mobile browsers.

Integration of CI/CD

Lastly, think about CI/CD integration and test environments. Reliable tests in CI pipelines (GitHub Actions, Jenkins, GitLab CI, etc.) are essential to contemporary DevOps workflows. Playwright and Selenium both facilitate CI usage, but Playwright is particularly CI/CD-friendly due to its design. It has built-in reporters for CI output, runs headless by default, and performs well in Docker containers. Additionally, it seamlessly integrates with cloud browser providers and containerized browsers. In the past, one had to use a Selenium Server or manage browser drivers on the CI agents, even though Selenium tests can also run in continuous integration (CI). This has become simpler for Selenium thanks to advancements (Selenium Manager, official Docker images).

However, many have discovered that it is a little easier to integrate Playwright into an existing pipeline. This is because Playwright eliminates the need to orchestrate a Selenium Grid hub or node in order to run a series of tests in parallel on a single machine. For teams looking to quickly set up continuous testing, this configuration ease is a factor. Both tools integrate with cloud testing platforms and are frequently used in continuous integration pipelines. For instance, you can access real devices and browsers by running Selenium or Playwright tests on Sauce Labs or BrowserStack. Similar to Selenium, cloud providers now support Playwright by offering real device clouds for Playwright testing.

Therefore, even though CI integration is not a differentiator in terms of possibilities, Playwright offers less configuration and faster response in such contexts.

Support and Community

Playwright is a relatively new project, so its community is smaller but rapidly expanding. A growing number of open-source community contributors are improving it, and Microsoft guarantees ongoing development and quality documentation. Numerous guides and discussions on Stack Overflow are already expanding. With years of experience, Selenium has a large and knowledgeable community. A Selenium user has probably encountered and shared a solution for any obscure browser bug or quirk. Selenium also supports a wide range of commercial services (cloud testing grids, official training, etc.) and integrates with innumerable frameworks and tools (JUnit/TestNG, NUnit, pytest, etc.).

Microsoft and the open-source community support Playwright. Selenium has funding (with contributions from vendors like BrowserStack and Sauce Labs) and an open governance model. Both are open source and free (no licensing fees). According to analyst reports, the majority of IT leaders claim that they select open source because of its strategic value, and contemporary open-source testing tools like Selenium and Playwright are now regarded as enterprise-grade solutions rather than merely “cheap alternatives.” in order for organizations to have faith that both communities will continue to prosper. For new UI automation projects, Playwright is frequently the best option, and Playwright expertise is being highlighted more and more at communities of practice (meetups, conferences).

Prospects for the Future

In order to bridge the gap with Playwright in areas like event handling and real-time DOM updates, Selenium 5 intends to implement the new WebDriver BiDi (Bidirectional) protocol. This will enable two-way communication with browsers.

In the meantime, Playwright appears to have a bright future. We can anticipate that Playwright will become more capable. It already has extensive integrations with the Microsoft ecosystem (GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps). AI-augmented testing is also becoming more popular, and Playwright might include AI-powered features like intelligent locators or help with test creation.