QA Blog

Selenium vs Cypress vs Playwright: What’s the Difference?

2025-04-20

When it comes to modern UI test automation, three tools often dominate the conversation: Selenium, Cypress, and Playwright. Each has its strengths — and ideal use cases — depending on your team, tech stack, and testing goals.

Let’s break them down clearly.

âś… Selenium: The Veteran

Selenium is the oldest and most widely used web automation tool. It supports many languages (Java, Python, JS, C#, Ruby), multiple browsers, and has a large community.

Pros

  • Works with many languages
  • Supports cross-browser testing (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, etc.)
  • Huge ecosystem + cloud support (e.g., BrowserStack, Sauce Labs)

Cons

  • Slower execution due to browser drivers
  • More setup/config compared to newer tools
  • Async handling in JS can feel clunky

⚡ Cypress: Fast & Dev-Friendly

Cypress is a modern JavaScript-first testing framework that runs in the same run loop as your app.

Pros

  • Extremely fast and reliable
  • Great developer experience (real-time UI, time-travel debugging)
  • Includes test runner, assertion lib, mocking built-in

Cons

  • Only supports JavaScript
  • Runs inside browser → limited cross-browser testing
  • No support for multi-tab or native mobile tests

🎭 Playwright: The Versatile Challenger

Playwright is Microsoft’s modern E2E tool — similar to Cypress but with more power.

Pros

  • Supports JS, Python, C#, Java
  • Handles multi-tab, iframes, mobile emulation
  • Excellent cross-browser support

Cons

  • Slightly steeper learning curve than Cypress
  • Smaller ecosystem (but growing fast)

🧠 TL;DR

| Tool | Best For | |--------------|--------------------------------------------| | Selenium | Broad compatibility, legacy apps | | Cypress | Fast JS-based dev workflows | | Playwright | Modern, versatile, powerful E2E testing |

Final Thoughts

If you’re starting fresh with a modern web stack, Cypress or Playwright are excellent picks.
If you need broad language/browser support, Selenium is still a solid option.

Let me know if you want help choosing or setting one up — I’ve built frameworks with all three.