> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://checklyhq.com/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Playwright vs other automation frameworks

> Learn how Playwright, a browser automation tool, simplifies testing across Chrome, Firefox, and WebKit. Start building more reliable web applications today.

There are a number of options when for [frameworks for end-to-end testing](https://www.checklyhq.com/blog/cypress-vs-selenium-vs-playwright-vs-puppeteer-speed-comparison/). If you're thinking about using Checkly, you're likely aware of a few.

## Puppeteer vs Playwright

The resemblance to Google's [Puppeteer](https://developer.chrome.com/docs/puppeteer) is striking, and for good reason.

In the words of the authors:

> We are the same team that originally built Puppeteer at Google \[...]. With Playwright, we'd like to take it one step further and offer the same functionality for *all* the popular rendering engines. We'd like to see Playwright vendor-neutral and shared governed.

In short, Playwright builds on the experience of Puppeteer to provide a way to:

1. run against all major browsers (Chromium/Chrome, Firefox, WebKit/Safari)
2. write more concise scripts (e.g. minimising the need for explicit waits)
3. easily migrate existing codebases (keeping a very similar API)

This is achieved in the form of a compact node library that exposes a high-level API to interact with web pages in a fast, secure, stable and simple way. As it is an open-source project, you can [contribute](https://github.com/microsoft/playwright/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md) to it yourself.

## Playwright vs Cypress

Long the dominant framework for (at the time) modern end-to-end testing, Cypress is still very widely used as a testing framework by front-end focused teams.

Due to architectural differences, Playwright can support multiple languages for writing tests, and run more browsers for testing. Due to Playwright's status as a free and open source project, users don't have to deal with new features being paywalled, a significant issue for Cypress users since 2023.

[Read more about Playwright vs. Cypress.](/comparisons/frameworks/playwright-vs-cypress)