Playwright vs Puppeteer: Which to choose in 2024?

Everyone who is a part of the technology ecosystem must know about the rivalry between Google & Microsoft. They left no stone unturned to compete with their product innovation in the market and recently with comparisons being drawn between Edge vs Chrome. Given this, both have their next-generation browser automation initiatives; Google’s Puppeteer & Microsoft Playwright. 

To be more precise, Playwright and Puppeteer are both Node.js libraries for browser automation. And the ongoing battle of Playwright vs Puppeteer will end not end soon.

What is Playwright Framework?

Introduced by Microsoft in 2020, Playwright is an open-source Node.js library that revolutionizes browser automation by simplifying control over Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit through a unified API.

Designed for automated UI testing, Playwright excels with its robust auto-wait feature, network activity interception, and multi-page scenario handling.

It supports end-to-end testing across major operating systems (Linux, Windows, macOS) and integrates seamlessly with CI/CD tools like Jenkins, Azure, and TravisCI, as well as frameworks like Jasmine and Jest.

With multi-language support for Java, Python, and .NET, Playwright is a versatile tool for cross-browser testing and automation.

Playwright comes with a set of APIs used to automate major browsers like Firefox, Chromium, and WebKit. With the help of these APIs, one can write code to create new browser pages, interact with on-page elements and navigate to different pages. It allows you to perform end-to-end testing through these APIs, which allows controlling headless browsers.

Playwright is compatible with almost all operating systems, like Linux, Windows, and macOS. It can also be integrated with major CI/CD tools such as Jenkins, Azure, CircleCI, TravisCI, etc., and testing frameworks like Jasmine, Jest, JavaScript, and Mocha. Playwright supports programming languages like Java, Python, and .NET.

Playwright is extremely useful in performing cross browser testing on complex applications. It is extremely accurate and offers wide coverage with high speed.

Advantages of Playwright

Listed below are some of the benefits of Playwright:

• It is easy to set up
• It has a stable set of features
• Test on browsers like Firefox, Chromium, and WebKit.
• The APIs are used in programming languages like Python, JavaScript, Java, and C#
• Auto-wait for elements
• Network interception for mocking and stubbing
• Integrates with Jest

Disadvantages of Playwright

• Doesn’t support Native Mobile Apps
• Fairly new, and the support from the community is limited.
• Since Playwright is new to the market, their user base is still growing.

What is Puppeteer Framework?

Puppeteer is a Node.js library and browser-driven framework primarily maintained by the Chrome DevTools team, focusing mainly on Chrome, with limited support for Firefox and Microsoft Edge. Launched in 2017, Puppeteer allows developers to interact with browsers programmatically, treating them as objects with methods like `.goto()` and `.type()`.

While it doesn’t include a built-in testing framework, Puppeteer integrates easily with popular JavaScript testing frameworks, making it a versatile tool for web automation tasks. Prominent features of Puppeteer include screenshot testing, performance testing, web scraping, and automation.

Advantages of the Puppeteer Framework

Listed below are some of the advantages of Puppeteer:

• Easy to configure
• Faster Executions
• Integrates with Mocha, Jest, and Jasmine
• Supports Firefox and Chrome
• Has vast community support

Disadvantages of Puppeteer

• It only supports Chrome and Chromium, with limited Firefox and Microsoft Edge support.
• Programming Language support is limited to Javascript

How to Choose a Library?

Generally, the developer community compares Playwright vs Selenium and Puppeteer vs Selenium. In this article, we are discussing Playwright and Puppeteer.  

Now the selection depends upon the goals.

• If someone is looking for more flexibility and support from third-party services, then Playwright is the choice one can make. 
• On the other hand, for organizations that work in JavaScript and use Chrome, then Puppeteer is the choice.

Because Playwright and Puppeteer were primarily developed by the same team and have similar APIs, migrating from Puppeteer to Playwright aren’t too difficult.

Playwright vs Puppeteer: Similarities and Differences

Playwright and Puppeteer are both powerful tools for browser automation, sharing many similarities, such as their ability to automate web interactions, handle web scraping, and integrate with popular testing frameworks like Jest.

Both offer features like auto-wait functionality, network interception, and proxy integration for handling anti-scraping measures.

However, they differ in areas like browser support, with Playwright supporting multiple browsers (Chrome, Firefox, WebKit) and multiple languages, while Puppeteer focuses primarily on Chrome/Chromium and JavaScript.

Additionally, Playwright supports more advanced end-to-end testing and mobile app testing, whereas Puppeteer is more specialized for Chrome-based tasks.

Similarities between Playwright and Puppeteer

Here are the similarities between Playwright and Puppeteer.

Differences between Playwright and Puppeteer

Here are the differences between Playwright and Puppeteer.

Playwright vs Puppeteer: Which to Choose?

Undoubtedly, both Playwright & Puppeteer are next-gen libraries for automation. And with the backing of players like Google & Microsoft, they will eventually become more progressive and reliable. 

Eventually, the choice someone makes solely depends on its use case. In the case of automating the website or taking screenshots, one might need cross-browser support, for that matter. So, the question begs – Is Playwright better than Puppeteer?

Three key factors help you decide:

• Browser Support
• Long-term Library Support
• The particular use case for browser automation 

Playwright comes with first-class support for Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit browsers

• It maintains a set of browser patches and shipping custom binaries 
• It works with a unified wire protocol for the internal translation to CDP, Juggler, WDP
• Regarding long-time library support,  Playwright still relies on the patched versions of Firefox and WebKit. So it is significant confusion about its future.

On the other hand, Puppeteer was mainly focused on Chromium but added Firefox support later to their core.

• They don’t work with patches like Playwright and work with browser vendors. It paves the way to improve their CDP functionality. 
• Their Firefox support is inferior as compared to Playwright
• On the other hand, Puppeteer keeps pace in improving its libraries.

Why run Playwright & Puppeteer Tests on Real Devices?

Running Playwright and Puppeteer tests on real devices is essential for ensuring accurate results that reflect real user experiences. Testing on emulators or simulators may miss critical performance or compatibility issues that only surface on actual devices.

By using real devices, developers can verify how their application behaves in real-world conditions, ensuring optimal performance, responsiveness, and reliability across different devices, operating systems, and browsers.

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This approach ultimately leads to higher-quality applications and better user satisfaction.

• Diverse environment testing: With Playwright and Python, you can automate tests across a wide range of devices, operating systems, and browsers, ensuring comprehensive cross-platform coverage.
• Real Devices and Browsers: Testing on real devices and browsers through Playwright provides an accurate simulation of real user experiences, giving confidence in the application’s performance.
• Concurrent test execution: Playwright allows simultaneous execution of multiple tests, reducing overall execution time, speeding up feedback, and accelerating deployment cycles.
• Custom Reports with Artifacts: With Playwright, you can generate detailed, custom reports to track and analyze test execution results efficiently.
• Easy Integration with CI/CD Pipeline: Playwright can be seamlessly integrated with popular CI/CD tools like Jenkins, TeamCity, and TravisCI for continuous testing and streamlined deployment.

Conclusion

Whether you choose – Playwright or Puppeteer, cross browser testing is essential. It ensures a consistent website experience irrespective of the device or browser it is accessed from.

Playwright is available for various operating systems like Windows, Linux, and Mac. Its API is also available in multiple programming languages like Java, Python, Typescript, JavaScript, and C#. On the other hand, Puppeteer is a Node library and works only for JavaScript developers. But when in terms of shorter scripts, Puppeteer has a significant advantage over Playwright in terms of shorter scripts. 

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