As someone who has worked extensively with browser automation and web scraping tools, the debate between Playwright vs Puppeteer is one I‘ve followed closely. Both libraries have their merits, and are popular choices for testing, automation and data extraction projects. Based on my experience, here‘s an in-depth look at how Playwright and Puppeteer stack up across various criteria.
A Brief History
First, some background on where each tool came from.
Puppeteer was created by the Chrome Developer Relations team at Google and released in October 2017. It was built on top of the Chrome DevTools Protocol, and aimed to provide a "user-friendly" high-level API for automating Chromium-based browsers like Chrome.
One of the goals with Puppeteer was to offer a more reliable automation library compared to Selenium, which had some lingering issues around browser compatibility and stability.
Playwright came along a few years later, in January 2020. It was developed by Microsoft – notably by two former core Puppeteer contributors who had moved there from Google.
As the name suggests, Playwright is positioning itself as a solution for automating realistic cross-browser scenarios and user journeys across Chrome, Firefox and WebKit. The API provides capabilities like mobile viewport emulation to enable proper responsive and mobile testing.
Since its release, Playwright has quickly gained popularity thanks to its robust feature set. But Puppeteer still retains a strong user base today.
Adoption and Usage Trends
Puppeteer continues to see widespread usage, likely due to its first-mover advantage and the benefits of Google‘s brand recognition. As of January 2023, Puppeteer has been downloaded over 75 million times from NPM, and has around 81,500 stars on GitHub.
That said, Playwright is catching up. It‘s been downloaded over 9 million times on NPM, and has over 46,500 GitHub stars. Its growth trajectory is impressively steep.
The chart below visualizes the NPM download trends over the past year for both tools:
As you can see, Puppeteer still leads in raw download numbers, but Playwright is rapidly closing the gap. This indicates Playwright‘s momentum with developers.
Key Differences
Now, let‘s explore how Puppeteer and Playwright differ across some key criteria:
Language Support
Playwright supports Python, Java, C#, JavaScript and TypeScript for writing tests and automation scripts.
Puppeteer is JavaScript/TypeScript only. There are some unofficial Python ports like Pyppeteer, but no official support.
For developers not working in JS/TS, Playwright provides more flexibility. Teams with existing skills in Python, Java or C# can use those languages with Playwright.
Browser Support
Playwright can automate Chrome, Firefox and WebKit-based browsers like Safari. This allows true cross-browser testing across desktop and mobile.
Puppeteer focuses mainly on Chrome and Chromium-based browsers. There is limited experimental browser support for Firefox and Edge, but it‘s not official.
If your product needs to work across browsers, Playwright is likely the better choice here.
API Style
An important difference between the two libraries is their approach to asynchronous vs synchronous APIs.
Playwright offers both async and sync APIs. The async APIs provide maximium performance for complex flows. The sync APIs allow for simpler scripting and debugging.
Puppeteer is asynchronous only. This can make debugging a bit trickier compared to Playwright‘s sync option.
In my experience, supporting both sync and async styles in one library is a major advantage. It caters both to simplicity for newcomers, and advanced performance for experts.
Device Testing
Playwright has excellent built-in support for simulating mobile devices and various viewports. You can test exact phone dimensions and touch events.
Puppeteer‘s mobile device emulation is possible but more limited. You may need extra libraries and configuration for robust device testing.
If mobile testing is a priority, Playwright will likely handle this better out-of-the-box.
Documentation and Community
Puppeteer has stellar documentation and guides provided by Google. Answers to common issues are easy to find on StackOverflow and GitHub.
Playwright‘s documentation is decent, but may lack the depth of Puppeteer‘s. The community is smaller and newer.
For teams that need to quickly lookup solutions during development, Puppeteer‘s community size is advantageous.
Performance
In terms of pure script execution speed, Playwright and Puppeteer are quite evenly matched. Both utilize native browser engines for maximum rendering performance.
That said, Playwright‘s support for synchronous APIs can make it simpler to write performant scraping and automation scripts. The asynchronous approach tends to require more callback management.
Overall I‘d rate performance as roughly equivalent, with Playwright having a slight edge in developer experience.
Ecosystem Integration
A key consideration is how easily these tools integrate with the broader JavaScript and web testing ecosystem.
Puppeteer benefits from its maturity here. There are many well-documented integrations and wrappers available for combining it with other popular libraries and frameworks like Jest, Cucumber, or Axios.
Playwright is newer, so community integrations aren‘t as extensive yet. But its ecosystem is rapidly growing.
For teams already bought into an existing test framework, Puppeteer may offer a lower migration cost. But Playwright‘s ecosystem is catching up.
Real-World Usage Examples
Let‘s look at some real-world examples of how Playwright and Puppeteer excel in certain common use cases:
Cross-Browser Testing
Say your product is a responsive web app that needs to work perfectly across desktop and mobile browsers. Playwright makes cross-browser testing seamless.
You can write one Playwright test script using the plain JS API. Then run it against various browsers and mobile emulations without modifications.
With Puppeteer you‘d have to write separate scripts per target browser and manage each individually. Playwright handles this out of the box.
Web Scraping
For web scraping projects, both tools work well – but Playwright offers a few advantages.
Its sync APIs make it very simple to write linear scraping scripts. The code reads similarly to how you‘d scrape manually. And Playwright has handy built-in waits to mimic human behavior.
Combining Playwright‘s scraping scripts with a robust proxy rotation solution can yield high-quality data extraction at scale.
Automating CI/CD Pipelines
Several customers use Playwright to automate regression testing directly within CI/CD pipelines like GitHub Actions.
The benefit here is Playwright scripts provide browser-level testing that‘s far more reliable than simpler solutions like Selenium WebDriver. Negligible config is required thanks to Playwright‘s JUnit reporter.
Ecommerce Testing
Puppeteer may be preferred for quickly testing and validating website experiences built primarily for Chrome – like many ecommerce sites.
Product teams can mock user flows like checkout funnels to catch regressions. Puppeteer‘s wide community also makes it easy to implement with popular test runners like Jest.
Creating Scripted Demos
Demo scripts that navigate sites and showcase products are common for docs/marketing. Puppeteer makes it simple to quickly script and record these one-off scenarios.
Its API reads intuitively like pseudocode for explaining the demo flow. Recording scripts via the Chrome DevTools pane is also supported for non-coders.
Key Takeaways
Here are some top-level guidelines on when each tool shines:
Consider Puppeteer when:
- You primarily target Chrome users
- Your team has existing experience with Puppeteer
- You need to integrate with other established test frameworks
- Easy-to-find community support is important
- You want to prototype and build scripts quickly
Consider Playwright when:
- You need reliable cross-browser testing
- You want to use Python, Java or C#
- Mobile testing is a priority
- Max performance is critical
- You want both simple scripting and advanced async capabilities
Conclusion
To wrap up, Playwright and Puppeteer are both excellent choices for test and web automation. You really can‘t go wrong with either.
Playwright shines where robust browser compatibility, mobile testing, performance and diverse language options matter most.
Puppeteer is ideal if you primarily target Chrome, need to integrate with existing infrastructure, or require proven community support.
For many teams, picking based on existing tech skills and integration costs is perfectly reasonable. Both tools can likely get the job done.
I hope this detailed walkthrough of Playwright vs Puppeteer clears up their key similarities and differences. If you have any other questions, feel free to reach out! I‘m always happy to discuss more.
