The software testing industry has been experiencing a deafening trend over the past five years.
Is it improving practices around test strategy? No.
Is it ensuring you always have a green build and confidence in your releases? Unfortunately not.
Is it fostering excellence through team communication and building relationships between product management, development, and quality? I sure wish it were.
I see the unfortunate trend of teams throwing out years' worth of Selenium tests and rewriting them in Playwright. They were probably reading one of those cringy articles that compare the two frameworks, ultimately trashing Selenium in the process.
The real problem: ancient tests and practices
The root cause of the frustration is not with the tool: it’s unstable tests, changing product requirements, and buggy AUT code. If your tests are unstable, it simply doesn’t matter if your product is also unstable: nobody will trust your test automation. Once you lose that trust, it’s very hard to get it back again.
Many teams I speak to start this migration to Playwright without addressing these concerns. They have a bunch of tests, a high failure rate, and a bunch of escaped defects. They begin the migration effort, which is really fun because you get that instant gratification of seeing the thing that didn't work over there start to work over here.
To be fair, Playwright has done excellent work in making their tool ultra-friendly to developers: tests can be developed, executed, debugged, and maintained right there in the developer IDE, and it’s not much work to spin up entire suites.
That’s all great, but escapes are still happening, and test counts continue to creep up. Developers hate having to spend time maintaining tests now that they wrote them, and we've kicked the can down the road another few months.
Tools CANNOT compensate for a lack of strategy. But little projects like this may make testers and teams feel better long enough to pursue the next gig. We call this “Resume-driven Development.”
If you must compare tools, please make sure you’re not just looking for “faster.”
The chart below isn’t here to pick which tool is better. It’s to help you understand the trade-offs you’re making by choosing one over the other.
Takeaways: Know your strategy before you choose your framework
Consider your project's requirements, team expertise, and long-term testing strategy. For new projects or teams looking to modernize their testing approach, Playwright may offer compelling advantages for those looking for an opinionated testing tool. For established projects with existing Selenium infrastructure, there’s a great chance you don’t need to migrate at all. A gradual migration or parallel implementation might be the most pragmatic approach in other cases.
I can’t tell you which route to take, but I urge you to think critically about the effects of making large framework migrations without understanding the concepts represented in the table above. Ultimately, the best testing framework is the one that aligns with your team's workflow, technical requirements, and ability to maintain and scale test automation effectively.
