RErektide·Dec 23, 2022
In What's New in Playwright 1.29microsoft
playwright
TypeScript2020–2026
microsoft / playwright
playwright
Playwright is a framework for Web Testing and Automation. It allows testing Chromium, Firefox and WebKit with a single API.
41Distinct people
52Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
100KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Playwright is a framework for Web Testing and Automation. It allows testing Chromium, Firefox and WebKit with a single API.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
- puppeteer/puppeteer · linked in 2 of the same discussions
- seleniumbase/seleniumbase · linked in 2 of the same discussions
Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 4:01:40 AM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year52 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2020-01-22 03:12:53 UTC to 2026-07-16 20:43:34 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 20 | 5 | 15 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 9 | 1 | 8 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 2 | 3 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 9 | 2 | 7 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
What Hacker News says
9 sourcesUsing TLS client certificates automatically is still not possible in Playwright [1]. That's our main reason why we keep using Selenium (with pytest-selenium) and Selenium Grid [2].
[1] https://github.com/microsoft/playwright/issues/1799
[2] https://www.selenium.dev/documentation/grid/
In Web automation: Don't use Selenium, use PlaywrightFor simple scraping where the content is fairly static, or when performance is critical, I will use linkedom to process pages.
https://github.com/WebReflection/linkedom
When the content is complex or involves clicking, Playwright is probably the best tool for the job.
https://github.com/microsoft/playwright
In Ask HN: What are the best tools for web scraping in 2022?In the world of SPA (single page applications), headless browser API is super helpful, playwright[1] and puppeteer[2] are very good choices.
[1] https://github.com/microsoft/playwright
[2] https://github.com/puppeteer/puppeteer
In Ask HN: What are the best tools for web scraping in 2022?I had understood that Playwright actually used the DevTools protocol rather than the WebDriver protocol, as mentioned here:
https://github.com/microsoft/playwright/issues/4862
And there's a bit of detail about how they're different here:
https://stackoverflow.com/q/50939116/142780
However that's more a detail and doesn't really undermine your point about Firefox / Safari being handled differently, it's just that Playwright implemented their own versions of the protocol for those two non-Chromium based browsers
In Web scraping via JavaScript runtime heap snapshotsThere is also this Github Discussions thread on how it compares with things like Cypress, which is a E2E testing tool used by lots of people on the frontend web.
TLDR: Playwright can achieve nearly all the things cypress can & more due to it being a fully scriptable browser
- https://github.com/microsoft/playwright/discussions/11201
- https://cathalmacdonnacha.com/cypress-vs-playwright-which-is...
- https://alisterbscott.com/2021/10/27/five-reasons-why-playwr...
In Playwright: Automate Chromium, WebKit and FirefoxLooking at the source, I wonder why lots of the files have Google copyright?
https://github.com/microsoft/playwright/blob/0d277fa589e9508...
edit: ah puppeteer was a Google project. I forgot
In Playwright: Automate Chromium, WebKit and FirefoxInteresting tidbit:
One of the main contributors of this project[0], was the core contributor (creator?) of Puppeteer[1], but then I guess left Google to join Microsoft and work on this[2][3].
[0] - https://github.com/aslushnikov
[1] - https://github.com/puppeteer/puppeteer/
[2] - https://github.com/microsoft/playwright/graphs/contributors
[3] - https://github.com/microsoft/playwright/graphs/contributors
In Playwright: Automate Chromium, WebKit and FirefoxPlaywright: Automate Chromium, WebKit and Firefox
383 points · Open discussion