Cypress or Playwright: Which Testing Framework Should You Choose?

Automated testing has emerged as a crucial tool in ensuring the reliability and functionality of applications, providing developers an efficient way to validate their code across various scenarios and environments. Cypress and Playwright are two leading test automation frameworks that both offer robust features and capabilities, but with distinct approaches and strengths. In this blog post, we will explore these frameworks in detail in order for you to better understand them and help you determine which best suits your needs. Let's start off with a quick introduction to each of these frameworks. 

Cypress vs. Playwright

Cypress is an open-source end-to-end testing framework for web applications. It enables developers to write and run tests directly within the browser, allowing for seamless testing of front-end functionality. Cypress offers a robust set of features, including a powerful testing API, automatic waiting and retrying mechanisms, real-time test execution, and interactive debugging tools. With its user-friendly interface and extensive documentation, Cypress has gained popularity among developers for its simplicity and effectiveness in writing and maintaining tests. 

Playwright is an open-source Node.js library originally created by Microsoft. It allows you to write end-to-end tests and perform browser automation tasks such as UI testing, web scraping, and browser automation. Playwright excels in cross platform testing, multiple browser support and ease of use/setup. 

Now that we have introduced both frameworks, let’s see how they stack up against certain criterias.

Browser support

Cypress: Cypress primarily focuses on Chrome testing, but overtime has started to support other browsers as well.

Playwright: One of Playwright’s distinguishing features is its extensive cross-platform support. You are able to automate tests in Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari without any limitations.

Language support

Cypress: Cypress is primarily a JavaScript testing framework.

Playwright: Compared to Cypress, Playwright leans mostly to the usage of Typescript, however, it also supports writing tests in Javascript, C#, Java, and Python.

Testing types

Cypress: Cypress primarily focuses on testing web applications.

Playwright: Playwright also focuses on web application testing, but it extends its capabilities to mobile testing using real devices or emulation.

Documentation

Cypress: Cypress offers extensive documentation covering a wide range of topics related to the framework. This will be your go-to resource for information when learning or using Cypress.

Playwright: Playwright also has dedicated documentation, though not as comprehensive as Cypress’. You may have to search the web for answers because the documentation sometimes does not provide a detailed enough explanation about a topic. The documentation is divided among the supported programming languages.

Setup

Cypress: The setup process for a project is relatively simple. Only a few commands and Cypress is ready to be used.

Playwright: Just like Cypress, the initial setup of Playwright is simple.

Debugging

Cypress: Cypress excels in debugging tests. For any action that is performed during testing, Cypress provides detailed error explanations and sometimes suggests possible causes.

Playwright: Playwright offers  two testing modes: UI and Debug. In the UI mode, the debugging is more focused on UI related elements. To address this limitation, you can run tests in debug mode, which allows you to see errors related to both UI elements and API issues.

Report generation

Cypress: Cypress uses Mocha for test report generation, allowing you to use any of the Mocha reporters in your tests. On top of that, Cypress supports  the integration of custom reporters.

Playwright: One of Playwright’s strengths is its HTML report generation, which requires no setup. All you need to do is run a test and Playwright will generate the report automatically. 

CI/CD integration

Cypress: Cypress offers headless test integration into CI/CD pipelines. 

Playwright: Just like Cypress, Playwright can be integrated into CI/CD pipelines. The documentation even provides a three-step guide on how to set everything up.

Pros and cons of Cypress and Playwright

Now that we have compared Cypress and Playwright across different categories, let's summarize them by taking a look at the pros and cons of each framework.

Pros

Cypress 

• Extensive documentation.
• Automatic waiting for elements, eliminating the need to manually assign waits.
• Effective debugging with detailed explanations.
• Large user base with plenty of tutorials and resources available on any Cypress topic.

Playwright 

• Great reporting support with built-in reporters and the ability to create custom reporters. 
• Cross-browser support that allows testing in multiple browsers.
• Supports mobile testing (hybrid/web apps).
• Allows tests to be created in multiple programming languages.
• Possibility to run tests in parallel in multiple tabs/browsers.
• Easy to set up and configure.

Cons

Cypress 

• Supports only JavaScript.
• Mainly focused on Chrome testing, though it offers other browser options.
• Does not support parallel testing.

Playwright

• Debugging is not always effective.
• Documentation is available, but often you’ll need to refer to other resources for common Playwright issues.
• Small learning curve if transitioning from Cypress.
• No automating waiting so needs to be done manually in tests.
• Does not support mobile testing for native apps.

The bottom line

Choosing the right framework isn't always straightforward, as there are many factors to take into consideration. Cypress excels in speed and test execution but is limited to JavaScript and offers less browser support compared to Playwright. On the other hand, Playwright offers multiple browser support, includes an integrated HTML reporter, and allows the use of various programming languages, like Python, TypeScript, Java, and C#. However, it may fall behind in test speed and debugging. The final decision on which framework you choose should be aligned with your project's needs, your team's experience and expertise, and the scope of the project. 

Do you want to implement test automation into your project and could use a helping hand? We can help you get started with test automation and make sure you choose the right framework for your project. Contact us to learn more about our test automation services.