Playwright or Cypress? What I Learned After 2000+ Tests

10/1/2024

I started my automation journey with Cypress - easy DX, quick wins, and great docs. As projects grew (multi-browser needs, tricky auth flows, and parallel CI), Playwright began solving problems with less ceremony. This post is a blunt comparison from hands-on work on SaaS, e-commerce and enterprise apps.

TL;DR - when to pick what

  • Pick Playwright if you need true cross-browser (Chromium, Firefox, WebKit/Safari), native multi-tab/multi-page flows, powerful network control, or aggressive parallel CI.
  • Pick Cypress if your app is Chromium-first, the team values its runner & time-travel UX, and your suite lives mostly in a single-tab world with simple network needs.

Cross-browser & mobile

  • Playwright: first-class support for Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit. Device descriptors for mobile emulation are built in.
  • Cypress: great with Chromium and Firefox; WebKit remains limited/experimental. Mobile is typically viewport tweaks or plugins, not true device emulation.

Parallelism, speed & isolation

  • Playwright runs tests in parallel locally and in CI with workers; test isolation is strong by default with new context/page per test when you use fixtures correctly.
  • Cypress parallelizes nicely in CI (cloud runners or your own infra). Local parallelism needs extra setup. Isolation is fine, but shared state & anti-patterns can leak if you’re not strict with test design.

Network interception & dynamic routing

Both tools intercept & mock. Playwright gives slightly deeper control and easier dynamic routing. Cypress is solid for most cases.

// Playwright: dynamic route + conditional mock
await page.route('**/api/v1/users/**', (route, request) => {
  if (request.url().includes('vip')) {
    return route.fulfill({
      status: 200,
      contentType: 'application/json',
      body: JSON.stringify({ tier: 'gold' }),
    });
  }
  route.continue();
});
// Cypress: intercept + reply (static match)
cy.intercept('GET', '**/api/v1/users', (req) => {
  req.reply({ statusCode: 200, body: { tier: 'silver' } });
});

Multi-tab / multi-page flows

  • Playwright: native—listen for context.waitForEvent('page'), switch tabs, assert, return. Feels like the browser.
  • Cypress: no native multi-tab; common workaround is to force links to open in the same tab.

Selectors & reliability

  • Playwright: powerful locators (getByRole, text, CSS, XPath) with auto-wait. Nested locators keep tests expressive and robust.
  • Cypress: CSS selectors are straightforward; Testing Library raises the abstraction to “by role/text/label” (recommended). Reliability is great when you avoid anti-patterns (e.g., arbitrary waits).

Debugging experience

  • Playwright: VS Code debugging, trace viewer, inspector. Async/await is first-class, so stepping through promises is natural.
  • Cypress: time-travel UI and .debug() are excellent for visual state checks. Deep async debugging can be trickier due to Cypress’s command queue model.

Real-world examples

  • Auth flows: with Playwright, sharing authenticated storage across tests (via storageState) speeds up suites. In Cypress, centralize login helpers and cache session tokens carefully.
  • Flakes: prefer role-based selectors and stable test data. Replacewait(1000) with auto-waiting locators or expect-conditions in both tools.
  • Reporting: Playwright traces + HTML report are gold for CI triage. Cypress has great dashboards with its cloud service or community reporters.

Migration notes (Cypress → Playwright)

  1. Start greenfield: stand up a small Playwright suite beside Cypress. Prove value on critical flows before migrating mass tests.
  2. Abstract test data & auth: move business logic into fixtures/helpers; keep tests declarative so swapping frameworks is easier.
  3. Map intercepts: convert cy.intercept calls to page.route with conditional logic where needed.
  4. Parallelize early: configure workers in CI; aim for short, isolated specs.

Conclusion

Both tools deliver. If you’re Chromium-only and love Cypress’s runner UX, you’ll be productive and happy. If your roadmap includes Safari/Firefox, multi-tab journeys, aggressive CI parallelism, and deeper network control, Playwright is the lower-friction path. The best teams keep tests declarative, push complexity into helpers/fixtures, and measure stability like a product KPI.