Playwright — Free & Open Source for Startups

Deal Highlights

Playwright — End-to-End Testing for Modern Web Apps

Playwright is Microsoft open-source testing framework for web applications that supports Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit with a single API. It handles modern web complexities — SPAs, iframes, shadow DOM, and network interception — that make other testing tools unreliable.

Why Playwright Over Selenium

Selenium was built for a different web. Playwright was built for today. Auto-waiting eliminates flaky tests. Browser contexts provide true isolation. Network interception mocks APIs deterministically. The result: tests that are fast, reliable, and maintainable.

Multi-Browser With One API

Write a test once, run it on Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit (Safari). Playwright manages browser installation and updates. Your CI pipeline tests across all browsers without separate configuration.

Codegen — Write Tests by Clicking

Playwright Codegen records your interactions with a website and generates test code automatically. Click through your app, and Playwright writes the test. Edit the generated code to add assertions and clean up selectors.

Playwright vs Cypress

Cypress has a better developer experience with time-travel debugging. Playwright supports more browsers (WebKit/Safari), runs tests faster in parallel, and handles multi-tab and multi-origin scenarios that Cypress cannot. Playwright is better for comprehensive cross-browser testing.

Getting Started

1. Install Playwright: npm init playwright@latest
2. Record a test with codegen: npx playwright codegen
3. Run tests: npx playwright test
4. View results in the HTML reporter

Pricing

Playwright is free and open-source. No paid plans. Run anywhere — locally, in CI, or on cloud testing platforms.

Who Is This Deal For?

Frequently Asked Questions

Everything you need to know about this startup deal.