After 6 months with Playwright: it’s great for cross-browser testing, but a hassle in CI/CD.
Context
For the last six months, I’ve been using Playwright to automate testing for a mid-sized e-commerce application. We have around 10,000 users daily, and our tech stack is based on React for the frontend and Node.js on the backend. Given the increasing complexity of our application, I wanted to ensure that our UI works flawlessly across all major browsers—Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit. Playwright seemed like the right choice for this task.
What Works
There are several features that make Playwright a solid choice for UI testing:
- Multi-browser support: Unlike some testing frameworks that focus solely on Chrome, Playwright allows you to test on multiple browsers with one API. This was invaluable for us since we needed to ensure compatibility across various environments.
- Auto-waiting: Playwright automatically waits for elements to be ready before executing actions. This reduced flaky tests significantly. When I implemented an example like the following:
from playwright.sync_api import sync_playwright
def run(playwright):
browser = playwright.chromium.launch()
page = browser.new_page()
page.goto("https://example.com")
page.click("text=Get Started") # Waits for the button to be visible before clicking
browser.close()
with sync_playwright() as playwright:
run(playwright)Here, the process is straightforward and intuitive. I didn’t have to worry about managing wait times manually.
- Network Interception: The ability to intercept and mock network requests made it easy to test various scenarios without relying on backend changes. We could simulate slow network speeds or even return different HTTP responses as needed.
page.on("route", lambda route: route.fulfill(
status=404, body=b"Not Found"
))This feature saved hours of testing time.
- Video recording: Playwright can record videos of the test runs. This was particularly useful for debugging when tests failed. Seeing exactly what happened on the screen at the time provided insight that debugging logs often miss.
What Doesn’t Work
But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Here are some significant pain points I encountered:
- Performance issues in CI/CD: Running tests in CI/CD pipelines was noticeably slower compared to local runs. A typical suite took about 15 minutes in CI when it only took 5 minutes locally. I suspect this is due to resource limitations and the complexity of the environments. The error messages were often vague, showing “Test timed out” without any context.
- Documentation gaps: While the official documentation is extensive, there were areas that lacked clarity. For example, understanding how to configure parallel tests took longer than I expected. I ended up resorting to community forums for help.
- Browser-specific issues: Occasionally, tests that passed in one browser failed in another. The discrepancies were sometimes due to subtle differences in rendering or JavaScript execution. In one instance, I received the error message “Element not found” while testing in Firefox, but the code worked perfectly in Chrome.
Comparison Table
| Feature | Playwright | Selenium | Cypress |
|---|---|---|---|
| Multi-Browser Support | Yes | Limited | No |
| Auto-Waiting | Yes | No | Yes |
| Network Interception | Yes | Yes | No |
| Video Recording | Yes | No | Yes |
| Real-time Reloading | No | No | Yes |
The Numbers
Let’s break down some performance metrics and costs:
- Test execution time: On average, running our test suite takes 5 minutes locally and 15 minutes in CI.
- Adoption rate: According to a recent survey by Stack Overflow, Playwright is used by about 20% of developers specializing in frontend testing.
- Cost: Playwright is open-source, so there are no licensing fees. However, you might incur costs for CI services, which can range from $30 to $300 monthly based on your usage.
Who Should Use This
If you’re a solo developer building a personal project or a small team looking to automate testing across multiple browsers, Playwright is a fantastic option. Especially if you’re looking to improve testing quality and reduce manual efforts, this framework can really help. But a word of caution: if your project is small and you don’t require extensive cross-browser testing, you might find it a bit overkill.
Who Should Not
On the flip side, teams that are working on legacy applications with a lot of dependencies or expecting quick results should steer clear. Playwright’s setup might be cumbersome for those who don’t have a dedicated QA team. If you’re looking for something simple and have no need for multi-browser testing, Selenium could serve you better.
FAQ
- Is Playwright free? Yes, Playwright is completely open-source and free to use.
- Can I use Playwright for mobile testing? While Playwright primarily focuses on web apps, you can test mobile web apps in the browser context.
- Does Playwright support headless testing? Absolutely! You can run tests in headless mode which is great for CI pipelines.
- How does Playwright compare to Puppeteer? While both are developed by the same team, Playwright offers more browser support and additional features.
- Can I run Playwright tests in parallel? Yes, you can run tests in parallel to speed up execution time significantly.
Data Sources
For this article, I relied on the following sources:
Last updated May 12, 2026. Data sourced from official docs and community benchmarks.
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