Why is Playwright Better than Selenium in 2025?

In just a few years, Playwright has become the fastest-growing test automation tool. Community surveys show Playwright being used by almost half of respondents, exceeding other tools. In TestGuild's survey analysis, Playwright usage has far exceeded Selenium making it the top automation testing tool in 2025. Many teams have started choosing Playwright as their primary UI automation framework.

Market Position

GitHub metrics also show Playwright's popularity: it has over 74,000 stars, much larger than Selenium's 32,000. The number of projects depending on Selenium is still large, but Playwright is far away (around 412,000 repositories use Playwright vs. 354,000 for Selenium).

Selenium benefits from its very large installed user base and long history. It remains one of the most widely used testing tools globally, a common standard for web UI testing in many enterprises. It is used in many test suites. The wide community and environment around Selenium, built up over nearly two decades, means many resources, integrations, and skilled users across the industry. However, its overall share is declining as teams seek faster and more stable alternatives. Even some core Selenium contributors acknowledge Playwright's progress, calling its growth notable.

Both frameworks are open source.

Enterprise and Industry Adoption

Startups and cloud-native SaaS companies often use Playwright, attracted by its current features and speed compared with legacy Selenium setups. Many teams have either adopted Playwright or plan to do so.

Larger companies from Fortune 500 companies have historically standardized on Selenium (given its maturity and wide support), but even in enterprise QA, newer entrants like Playwright are seeing quick uptake due to their stability and enhanced capabilities. Even conservative organizations are trying it out. Highly regulated sectors (finance, healthcare, fintech) that once may have stuck with older, proven tools are evaluating Playwright, thanks to increased confidence in the security and stability of open-source QA solutions.

Many enterprises are now continuing to run extensive Selenium test suites for older applications while introducing Playwright for new web apps. The backing of Microsoft and an active community give management confidence that Playwright is not a risky experimental choice.

Performance and Architecture

Selenium uses the W3C WebDriver protocol and talks to browsers through an extra server that sends HTTP messages. Playwright keeps an open WebSocket link directly with the browser and speaks the browser's own protocol, so it skips the HTTP layer. This makes Playwright tests run faster.

One benchmark found a Playwright script took ~290 ms vs. ~536 ms for Selenium on the same task (almost twice as fast). The lower delay and effective communication allow Playwright to better process dynamic, JavaScript-heavy pages without slowing down.

It's also optimized for headless mode by default, further speeding up CI test runs. Selenium tests can certainly be run headless as well, but historically required extra configuration, whereas Playwright's headless operations are built in and simplified.

For teams needing quick feedback loops, this performance edge is critical, and many have reported faster execution and shorter test cycles with Playwright.

Setup and Ease of Use

Playwright was designed with simplicity in mind. It has a unified API and an all-in-one approach. Installing Playwright is one command (npm init playwright@latest for Node) that auto-downloads browsers and scaffolds a test project, so you can start writing tests in minutes.

Selenium's setup has improved (Selenium Manager now auto-downloads browser drivers), but it still requires more manual configuration.

More importantly, Playwright auto-waits for elements and conditions by default, avoiding instability caused by timing issues. Selenium, on the other hand, relies on the user to implement waits or use its explicit wait APIs. If done improperly, Selenium tests can suffer from intermittent failures (for example, trying to click an element before it's loaded).

Teams consistently report far less instability with Playwright thanks to these intelligent waiting and built-in retries. Playwright scripts also tend to be brief — its API was designed to require fewer lines of code for common actions, making tests easier to read and maintain.

Overall, Playwright offers a less steep learning curve compared to Selenium.

Language Support

Selenium is well known for its wide language support. Testers can write Selenium scripts in Java, Python, C#, Ruby, JavaScript/Node, PHP, Perl, and more. This adaptability made Selenium suitable for many teams' existing tech stacks.

Playwright, being newer, supports a slightly narrower set of languages: initially JavaScript/TypeScript, and now also Python, Java, and .NET (C#) bindings. Those languages cover the majority of automation needs (and Playwright's API is kept very similar across JavaScript, Python, Java, and C#). However, organizations deeply invested in Ruby or PHP for test scripts may find Selenium is still the viable choice since Playwright lacks official support there.

On the other hand, Playwright's multi-language offering is sufficient for most modern teams, and its design makes it feel "native" in each of those languages. For example, a Python shop or a Java enterprise can adopt Playwright without changing their core language — a huge advantage in large-scale projects. This polyglot support, combined with easy integration into various build systems (Node/NPM, PyPI, Maven, NuGet, etc.), means Playwright can fit into diverse tech stacks.

Selenium still has an edge in the total number of supported languages, but for the languages most commonly used in web development and test automation today, both tools are covered.

Browser Compatibility and Platform Support

Selenium's long existence and WebDriver-based approach give it very broad browser compatibility. It can automate Chrome/Chromium, Firefox, Safari, Edge, and even legacy browsers like Internet Explorer or Opera.

Playwright focuses on current browser engines: Chromium (which covers Chrome, Edge, and any Chromium-based browser), WebKit (Safari's engine), and Mozilla's Gecko (Firefox). Playwright covers all current major browsers used by end-users, but it doesn't support aging browsers like IE11.

For most organizations in 2025, lack of IE support isn't a dealbreaker (as IE is officially retired), but if legacy browser testing is needed, Selenium is the go-to.

Playwright does not require external browser driver executables — when you install it, it downloads a compatible version of Chromium, WebKit, and Firefox for you. This makes cross-browser testing effortless: the same script can run on all three engines via one API, with no extra setup.

Selenium typically requires installing or configuring a driver for each browser (for example, ChromeDriver, GeckoDriver), although Selenium Manager has started automating that step. Playwright's consistency can simplify test code and maintenance.

Both tools are cross-platform (Windows, Linux, macOS are supported) — Selenium even supports niche platforms like Solaris for remote execution.

Mobile Testing Capabilities

For mobile device testing, Selenium extends via Appium to support real iOS/Android app automation. Selenium Grid also allows running tests on real mobile devices in clouds.

Playwright's out-of-the-box mobile support is limited to mobile browser emulation (for example, simulating viewport sizes, touch events, geolocation, etc., in a desktop browser engine). It cannot directly control native mobile apps or real mobile browsers without third-party tools.

In web contexts, however, Playwright's coverage of mobile web is quite strong — it includes a WebKit build for iPhone/iPad testing and can emulate devices, which covers many responsive-design test cases.

For organizations needing true on-device mobile automation, Selenium (with Appium) might still be needed. But for web apps across desktop and mobile browsers, Playwright's built-in cross-browser support is comprehensive and very convenient.

Advanced Features and API Capabilities

A main reason developers prefer Playwright is the wealth of detailed features built into its API. Playwright allows detailed control over browser behavior in ways Selenium historically hasn't. For example, Playwright can intercept network requests and responses (to stub APIs or test offline scenarios), simulate geolocation or permissions, and handle multiple browser contexts or tabs easily. Many of these capabilities stem from its direct use of browser DevTools protocols.

Selenium WebDriver was more limited to the standard web automation commands, though in Selenium 4+ some of these features have been introduced via the "Chrome DevTools" interface (for Chrome) or the WebDriver BiDi.

Still, Playwright's API is ahead in offering an all-in-one solution for not just clicking links and filling forms, but also doing things like file downloads/uploads, intercepting network calls, and running API calls directly.

Playwright can also test APIs. It lets your test send HTTP requests and check the responses, so you can test both APIs and web pages with the same tool. Selenium has no native concept of API calls — testers would need a separate library (like RestAssured or requests) for that. This integration of API and UI tests is attractive for end-to-end testing needs.

Playwright's parallel test execution feature can launch multiple browser contexts in one process, or use its test runner to run tests concurrently across workers, achieving parallelism without extra infrastructure.

Selenium can run in parallel too, but it typically requires setting up Selenium Grid or using a cloud service to coordinate multiple processes — an extra overhead that smaller teams may find burdensome. Playwright's design for concurrency helps teams easily scale up their test suites for faster results.

Debugging and Development Tools

Finally, debugging and authoring tools are a strong suit for Playwright. It includes a trace viewer that lets you visually inspect test run traces, snapshots, and console logs after a failure. It also has a code generator that can record user actions in a browser and generate test code — a great way to bootstrap tests or troubleshoot selectors.

Selenium's counterpart is the Selenium IDE (a browser extension that records scripts), but it's more limited and not integrated into most users' development workflows.

Playwright's ability to record videos of test runs and capture screenshots on failures by default also greatly aids debugging.

Community and Support

Being a newer project, Playwright's community is smaller but very fast growing. Microsoft ensures active development and good documentation, and an increasing number of contributors from the open-source community are enhancing it. There are already growing discussions on Stack Overflow and a multitude of guides.

Selenium has a very large, well-established community and many years' worth of knowledge base. For any obscure browser quirk or error, there's likely a Selenium user who has encountered it and shared a solution. Selenium also integrates with countless frameworks and tools (JUnit/TestNG, NUnit, pytest, etc.), and there are lots of commercial services supporting it (cloud testing grids, official training, etc.).

In terms of support, Selenium has sponsors and an open governance model (with vendors like BrowserStack, Sauce Labs contributing), whereas Playwright is backed by Microsoft and the open-source community. Both are free and open source (no licensing costs).

Analyst reports note that modern open-source testing tools, including Selenium and Playwright, are now seen as enterprise-grade solutions, not just "cheap alternatives" — most IT leaders say they choose open source for its strategic value. So organizations can feel confident that both communities will continue to thrive.

Playwright is often the top recommendation for new UI automation projects, and communities of practice (meetups, conferences) are increasingly highlighting Playwright know-how. Selenium's community isn't shrinking overnight — but many Selenium experts are also learning Playwright, and tool vendors now often support both.

Use Cases and Application Types

Both Playwright and Selenium are primarily used for browser-based UI test automation. That includes functional UI tests, end-to-end tests, regression tests on web applications, and web scraping or RPA-like scenarios.

In this domain, Playwright has proven especially useful for current web apps (single page applications, heavily interactive UIs) where its handling of asynchronous events and dynamic content works well. Teams building React, Angular, or Vue applications use Playwright because it was designed with these frameworks in mind — its automatic waiting and strong handling of elements make testing dynamic interfaces much easier. Selenium can test such apps too, but often requires more careful synchronization logic.

Playwright also excels at cross-browser testing for web apps that must work on Chrome, Firefox, and Safari — with one Playwright test, you can ensure consistency across these browsers quickly. Enterprises that maintain customer-facing web portals (for example, banking websites or SaaS dashboards) value this capability to run nightly suites on multiple browsers without a complex grid setup.

In contrast, Selenium's use cases sometimes extend further due to its age: for example, if a team needs to automate an older web application or an internal app that only works in IE, Selenium is virtually the only choice (Playwright cannot automate IE). Selenium is also often the backbone for large-scale integration test frameworks in enterprises — many custom frameworks and test harnesses have been built on Selenium WebDriver over the years. These might integrate with test management tools, generate detailed reports, or tie into legacy systems. Replacing them with Playwright overnight isn't easy. Thus, Selenium remains relevant for projects with heavy legacy dependencies or where its wide language support and long-term community trust are factors.

Extended Testing Capabilities

Beyond classic UI automation, the question is: what about API testing, performance testing, and how do these tools fit in?

Playwright includes API testing capabilities — teams can use it to call REST/GraphQL endpoints, verify responses, and even combine those calls with UI interactions in a single test flow. Selenium does not offer this. API testing would be a separate concern.

For performance testing, neither Playwright nor Selenium is a dedicated performance or load testing tool (they aren't designed to generate thousands of requests per second — tools like JMeter, Gatling, or k6 are more suitable for that). However, both can play a role in performance automation. Testers can use Playwright or Selenium to measure page load times, transaction durations, or memory usage in the browser. Playwright's direct access to browser internals means it can capture performance metrics and even simulate low bandwidth or high CPU conditions.

Including simple performance checks via Playwright or Selenium in your CI pipeline can give early visibility into performance issues. Additionally, some frameworks allow reusing Playwright or Selenium scripts for load generation — running many instances of a browser test in parallel to simulate multiple users (though this is limited by the heavy resource cost of real browsers). Playwright's efficient parallelization and headless mode make it somewhat more viable for this than Selenium in many cases.

Playwright is described as a perfect tool for cross-browser performance testing, especially for current web apps, since it requires no extra setup to test across Chrome, Safari (WebKit), and Firefox in parallel. For true high-scale load testing, teams typically still turn to specialized tools or cloud services.

CI/CD Integration

Finally, consider test environments and CI/CD integration. In modern DevOps workflows, having tests that run reliably in CI pipelines (GitHub Actions, Jenkins, GitLab CI, etc.) is critical.

Both Selenium and Playwright support CI usage, but Playwright's design makes it especially CI/CD-friendly. It runs headless by default, works well in Docker containers, and has built-in reporters for CI output. It also integrates smoothly with containerized browsers or cloud browser providers.

Selenium tests can run in CI too, but traditionally one had to manage browser drivers on the CI agents or use a Selenium Server. With improvements (Selenium's official Docker images, Selenium Manager), this has gotten easier for Selenium.

Still, many have found that plugging Playwright into a current pipeline is a bit simpler — running a set of tests in parallel on a single machine using Playwright doesn't require orchestrating a Selenium Grid hub/node. This ease of configuration is a factor for teams who want to quickly set up continuous testing.

Both tools are used in CI pipelines widely, and both integrate with cloud testing platforms (for example, you can run Selenium or Playwright tests on BrowserStack or Sauce Labs for access to real devices and browsers). Cloud vendors now support Playwright similarly to Selenium, providing real device clouds for Playwright tests too. So, while CI integration is not a differentiator in terms of possibility, Playwright offers a simpler configuration and faster feedback in such environments.

Future Outlook

Selenium 5 is on the horizon and aims to implement the new WebDriver BiDi (Bidirectional) protocol, which will allow two-way communication with browsers, narrowing the gap with Playwright in areas like real-time DOM updates and event handling.

Meanwhile, Playwright's future looks very promising. We can expect Playwright to expand its capabilities. It already integrates deeply with the Microsoft ecosystem (Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions). There is also a push toward AI-augmented testing, and Playwright may incorporate AI-driven features such as smart locators or test generation assistance.

How Belitsoft Can Help

Belitsoft offers a comprehensive end-to-end QA and DevOps services that places dedicated Playwright and Selenium engineers at your disposal. You can engage a single specialist to fill a skills gap or assemble an entire cross-functional automation team experienced in Playwright, Selenium, Appium, and the languages your teams already use — whether that is Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, Java, or .NET. Because our engagement model is flexible, you can expand the team when release frequency spikes and reduce it again when the pace slows, so your test automation capacity always aligns with your product roadmap.