Puppeteer vs. Playwright: Automated testing tools compared

Testing web applications is an essential requirement for any development project. With the explosion of automation, developers now have a wealth of options available for this. Automated testing helps you ensure the stability, functionality, and performance of your applications without needing tiresome, repetitive manual checks.

As web applications become more and more complex, the demand for robust testing frameworks has grown. With one tool running in the background, at the click of a button, or even in your deployment pipeline, you can simulate user interactions and verify expected outcomes for user journeys, feature changes, and updates. These tools can help streamline your QA (quality assurance) and reduce the time it takes to catch and fix bugs.

Puppeteer and Playwright have emerged from this growth of reliable browser automation frameworks as popular choices for developers. Both are powerful, feature-rich tools that enable developers to drive simulated user actions across a number of browsers, and even perform tasks like web scraping and performance monitoring. Here we will explain their similarities and differences, and discuss their unique features and capabilities, allowing you to carefully consider which is a better fit for your use case.

The key differences between Puppeteer and Playwright

Puppeteer is a Node.js library developed by Google, with deep integration into Chrome’s DevTools, that provides a high-level API for controlling Chromium-based browsers, including Chrome, Edge, and Opera, and also Firefox.

Playwright is a more recent browser automation framework developed by a team at Microsoft, some of whom originated at Google’s Puppeteer team. Unlike Puppeteer, Playwright offers cross-browser support, letting you test on Chromium-based browsers, Firefox, and WebKit browsers like Safari.

Browser support

The most significant difference between Puppeteer and Playwright is their browser support. While Puppeteer focuses on Chromium-based browsers and Firefox, making it highly optimized for those environments, that fact naturally limits its cross-browser testing capabilities. Playwright has a much broader compatibility, supporting the three major browser engines: Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit (the engine behind Safari). This capability makes Playwright a better choice for teams needing to ensure a consistent user experience across multiple browsers.

Language support

Being a JavaScript implementation, Puppeteer is tightly coupled with Node.js and therefore only supports JavaScript and TypeScript, making it an easy choice if you're already working in the Node.js ecosystem. Playwright, however, offers more flexibility by providing libraries in JavaScript, Python, C#, and Java.

Playwright supports a wider range of browsers and languages than Puppeteer does.

Parallel execution

Efficiently executing your test suite is crucial for fast development cycles, so parallel execution is vital for some teams. Playwright includes built-in support for parallel test execution, allowing you to run tests simultaneously, across multiple browsers and device profiles, with minimal setup. On the other hand, Puppeteer does not natively support parallel execution — so, if you do need this, you’ll need a hand-rolled solution, or a third-party framework, to run tests concurrently.

Tracing and performance

Here, Puppeteer benefits from its Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP) integration, meaning you can capture more detailed performance metrics with API calls like client.send('Performance.enable') and monitor network traffic from within the tool’s API with calls like Performance.getMetrics(). Playwright can’t match this due to its necessary higher-level API.

The key similarities between Puppeteer and Playwright

Both Puppeteer and Playwright support headless and headed browser modes, meaning you can run tests without the browser UI and can execute them from the command line, which is perfect for CI/CD.

They also share core functions which every developer will need for automation, like grabbing screenshots, scraping page data, inspecting DOM elements, filling out forms, executing scripts on pages, and navigation. Fortunately, both Puppeteer and Playwright support Windows, Linux, and macOS, so you’re covered regardless of your dev platform.

Here’s how to start a simple instance of Puppeteer up in JavaScript:

And here’s how to start up a simple instance of Playwright in JavaScript:

Browser drivers all suffer anti-scraping challenges, like CAPTCHAs, and bot-detection mechanisms are common, but these frameworks offer solutions: Puppeteer provides stealth plugins, while Playwright supports automatic detection bypass and browser launch customization.

They also handle device emulation (through profile selection or custom settings for viewport size), support network throttling, and can simulate user agents. Finally, you will find great documentation and online examples for all platform offerings from both teams.

A comparison of Playwright and Puppeteer

To make it easier to compare Playwright and Puppeteer side by side, this table highlights their key similarities and differences. So, whether you’re deciding which tool fits your project or just looking for a quick reference, this should help clear things up.

Puppeteer

Puppeteer is built by the same team responsible for Chrome DevTools at Google. We’ve already said that it’s good for automating browser tasks and screen-scraping pages, and it’s ideal for JavaScript-centric teams focused on tight control of the Chromium browser.

Unique features of Puppeteer

Puppeteer has tight browser integration with Chrome’s DevTools API. This is because it was developed by the Chrome DevTools team using their own protocol, affording it the ability to stay right up to date with the browser advancements.

Puppeteer’s request interception is configured with the Page.setRequestInterception() method, allowing you to observe, modify, or block outgoing HTTP requests and incoming responses. This is a powerful feature, useful for when you are optimizing page loading or simulating network conditions.

Puppeteer also supports the new WebDriver BiDi protocol, which is intended to provide fast, low-level control, similar to the DevTools API.

Puppeteer challenges

• Some users have found that accessing all the request headers from Puppeteer is challenging, but this can be browser dependent.

• Puppeteer is not as reliable in determining when page load is complete because a one-size-fits-all solution to this problem is difficult for every page.

• It does not support WebKit browsers or non-JS development languages.

Playwright

Playwright was started at Microsoft in 2020 by some team members who left the original Puppeteer team. We have said that it is ideal for teams focused on cross-browser testing and CI/CD pipeline integration.

Unique features of Playwright

Playwright’s standout feature is its built-in support for parallel testing, allowing you to run multiple tests across isolated threads and even across different browsers simultaneously. This helps speed up your local testing when you don’t want to wait around for multiple results.

Playwright also comes with a test generator (built into the Playwright CLI), which allows you to record user interactions on a web page, automatically generating test scripts as you go.

Playwright also provides APIs to monitor and modify browser network traffic, meaning you can intercept HTTP requests before they reach the server, allowing you to mock responses, modify requests, or block them entirely.

The whole API is built around detecting when browser events complete, meaning you can be sure a page has finished loading when your handler triggers, for example.

Playwright challenges

• The Playwright team builds its own patched versions of Firefox and WebKit so that each browser in its unified API has the same capabilities. This means they may not always have parity with the publicly downloadable browser versions.

• WebDriver BiDi protocol support is pending.

How to choose between Puppeteer and Playwright

The tool you choose will depend on the makeup of your tech stack, team preferences, and target audience. Here are some questions to ask yourself when considering the options:

• Do you need to support WebKit browsers or is the lower-level Chrome DevTools more useful — for example, custom experimental Chrome flags?

• Is the tool compatible with the language and runtime you are already using?

• Does the community exist and respond where you need it?

• Can you invest the required time to build the tools you need given the learning curve and ongoing maintenance requirement?

Ultimately, with these two options in front of you, the deciding factor is likely to come down to one of two things:

• Puppeteer is the ideal choice if you are a JavaScript stack developer or team and need full Chrome DevTools access, including experimental features via a purpose-built JavaScript API, or you are confident that providing Chromium support covers all browsers for your customers.

• Playwright is the clear winner if you need cross-browser compatibility or multi-language (or non-JavaScript) support and powerful test features, like snapshot comparisons, and don’t mind being limited to the common functions of those browsers.

Validate your content using Contentful with Puppeteer or Playwright:

• via the headless CMS.

• You can use this to automate API tests to verify correct responses from Contentful’s endpoints.

• You might also want to mock API calls to test how different responses affect the UI.

To try this out, sign up to Contentful today.

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