What is Selenium and Playwright , what are the differences

 Selenium Architecture and History

Architecture: Selenium uses the WebDriver API to interact between web browsers and browser drivers. It operates by translating test cases into JSON and sending them to the browsers, which then execute the commands and send an HTTP response back.

History: Selenium has been in continuous operation and development for 18+ years. As a longstanding open source project, it offers broad support for browsers/languages, a wide range of community resources and an ecosystem of support.

Playwright Architecture and History

Architecture: Playwright uses a WebSocket connection rather than the WebDriver API and HTTP. This stays open for the duration of the test, so everything is sent on one connection. This is one reason why Playwright’s execution speeds tend to be faster.

History: Playwright is fairly new to the automation scene. It is faster than Selenium and has capabilities that Selenium lacks, but it does not yet have as broad a range of support for browsers/languages or community support. It is open source and backed by Microsoft.

Comparing Playwright vs Selenium Features

It’s important to consider your own needs and pain points when choosing your next test automation framework. The table below will help you compare Playwright vs Selenium.

Criteria Playwright Selenium

Browser Support Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit (note: Playwright tests browser projects, not stock browsers) Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Opera, Edge, and IE

Language Support Java, Python, .NET C#, TypeScript and JavaScript. Java, Python, C#, Ruby, Perl, PHP, and JavaScript

Test Runner Frameworks Support Jest/Jasmine, AVA, Mocha, and Vitest Jest/Jasmine, Mocha, WebDriver IO, Protractor, TestNG, JUnit, and NUnit

Operating System Support Windows, Mac OS and Linux Windows, Mac OS, Linux and Solaris

Architecture Headless browser with event-driven architecture 4-layer architecture (Selenium Client Library, JSON Wire Protocol, Browser Drivers and Browsers)

Integration with CI Yes Yes

Prerequisites NodeJS Selenium Bindings (for your language), Browser Drivers and Selenium Standalone Server

Real Device Support Native mobile emulation (and experimental real Android support) Real device clouds and remote servers

Community Support Smaller but growing set of community resources Large, established collection of documentation and support options

Open Source Free and open source, backed by Microsoft Free and open source, backed by large community