When building websites or apps, it's important to make sure everything works correctly—every button clicks, every form submits, and every page loads as expected.
Instead of manually checking these things over and over, we use automated testing tools to do it for us. For a long time, I used a tool called Cypress. It was easy to set up and worked well for many tests. As my projects got bigger and more complex, I ran into problems that made me look for a better solution. That’s when I found Playwright.
At first, Cypress seemed like the perfect choice. It was simple to use, had great documentation, and let me see exactly what was happening during a test with screenshots and a helpful dashboard. It even tried to automatically handle waiting for things like page loads so that tests wouldn’t fail due to slow responses.
But as my projects grew, I started facing problems. Sometimes tests would randomly fail for no clear reason. Other times, Cypress would get stuck waiting for something to load even when it was already on the page. These issues made testing frustrating and time-consuming because I had to keep fixing or rerunning tests.
The biggest reason I switched to Playwright was speed and reliability.
Playwright runs tests much faster than Cypress, which saves a lot of time. It also handles waiting much better, meaning fewer random test failures. Other key differences include:
Works on More Browsers: Cypress mainly works with Chrome, while Playwright supports Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.
Handles Complex Testing Better: Playwright makes it easier to test things like logging into a website across different pages.
Faster and More Efficient: Playwright runs multiple tests at once by default, making the whole testing process much quicker.
Better Mobile Testing: If you need to test how a site looks on a phone or tablet, Playwright has more realistic mobile simulation.
Switching from Cypress to Playwright takes some effort, but it is worth it.
The main things I had to adjust were:
Learning New Commands: Playwright has a slightly different way of writing tests. They aren't more difficult, just different.
Fixing Test Timing Issues: Since Playwright runs so much faster, I had to adjust some tests to make sure they still worked as expected.
Using Playwright’s Built-In Features: Playwright has a testing extension in Visual Studio Code that is a game-changer. Its built-in test recorder makes writing tests incredibly easy by allowing you to interact with your application while Playwright automatically generates test code for you. Then you just have to go in and edit them with the assertions you want.
Cypress is still a great tool, but for my needs, Playwright is just better. It’s faster, more reliable, and works better for larger, more complex websites. If you’ve ever struggled with slow or flaky tests, I highly recommend giving Playwright a try!
- Written by Ashley Haas
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