Playwright
Cross-browser automation library supporting Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit.
Playwright is a modern browser automation library maintained by Microsoft, offering support for multiple browser engines. It provides a unified API for testing and scraping across Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit platforms.
| Pricing from | Free (open-source) |
| Best for | Projects requiring cross-browser automation, mobile emulation, and multi-platform testing. |
| Website | playwright.dev |
Company facts
| Social profiles | LinkedIn, X, YouTube |
Facilities and features
- API
What stands out
The product offers a full-featured test runner with auto-waiting and parallelism.
“Full-featured test runner with auto-waiting, assertions, tracing, and parallelism across Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit.”Playwright, own website
Playwright runs tests in parallel by default across all configured browsers.
“Tests run in parallel by default across all configured browsers.”Playwright, own website
Strengths and trade-offs
- Cross-browser support with consistent API
- Superior performance compared to Selenium; mobile device emulation included
- Smaller community than Selenium, leading to fewer third-party integrations
Appears in
Best browser testing platforms
1
Ghost Inspector100.02
Applitools98.03
Sauce Labs98.0RANKINGfull ranking →SAASTop 10 Web Scraping Tools
1
Scrapy95.02
Selenium92.73
Beautiful Soup90.3RANKINGfull ranking →How Playwright ranks
#9 in Best browser testing platforms
How the score is made up: Evidence on its own site 20; How complete its published information is 12; Fit to this ranking's criteria 40; Buying information on its own site 8.
“Playwright enables reliable web automation for testing, scripting, and AI agents. One API to drive Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit — in your tests, your scripts, and your agent workflows.”Playwright, own website
Alternatives to Playwright
| Scrapy Open-source Python framework for professional web scraping at scale. | #1 in Top 10 Web Scraping Tools | 95.0 |
| Selenium Browser automation tool for scraping JavaScript-rendered and dynamic websites. | #2 in Top 10 Web Scraping Tools | 92.7 |
| Beautiful Soup Simple Python library for parsing HTML and XML documents. | #3 in Top 10 Web Scraping Tools | 90.3 |
 PuppeteerNode.js library for headless browser automation and scraping. | #4 in Top 10 Web Scraping Tools | 88.0 |
 RequestsPython HTTP library for making simple, elegant web requests. | #5 in Top 10 Web Scraping Tools | 85.7 |
 CheeriojQuery-inspired syntax for parsing and manipulating HTML in Node.js. | #7 in Top 10 Web Scraping Tools | 81.0 |
Questions about Playwright
How much does Playwright cost?
Lister lists Playwright's pricing as: Free (open-source).
Is Playwright free?
Yes. Its pricing reads: Free (open-source).
Who is Playwright best for?
Playwright is best for projects requiring cross-browser automation, mobile emulation, and multi-platform testing.
Where does Playwright rank?
Playwright is ranked #6 in Top 10 Web Scraping Tools (Lister Score 83.3) and #9 in Best browser testing platforms (Lister Score 80.0).
What are the best alternatives to Playwright?
The closest alternatives on Lister are Scrapy (#1 in Top 10 Web Scraping Tools), Selenium (#2 in Top 10 Web Scraping Tools) and Beautiful Soup (#3 in Top 10 Web Scraping Tools).
Is this your company?
Claim Playwright to suggest corrections to its listing (pricing, features, details) or ask about an enhanced profile. We review every claim before anything changes.