Date: 2022

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Hola friends! We recently created a Discord for Software Automation where we discuss these kinds of topics on a bi-weekly basis.

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Background

Our goal is to choose what test framework/runner we want to use in order to enable us to write/introduce our first E2E browser smoke test.

In Nextjs/Javascript land there's really only two top modern choices, Playwright and Cypress. While both tools are strong and fairly new and check similar boxes, we wanted to make sure we choose the framework for us that will scale with us and fit our needs.

Playwright/Cypress Browser Support:

• Chrome
• Chromium
• Edge
• Firefox

Key differences in Browser support:

Cypress also supports Electron, but does NOT support Webkit (Safari) like Playwright does. If Safari is important to us then this is a borderline showstopper.

Pros and Cons for Playwright/Cypress

Below is a list of Pros and Cons for each tool prioritized by importance IMO followed by a general summary and my 2cents.

Cypress Pros:

• Cypress dashboard service which comes with some neat features besides just parallelizing tests
• Focus on a better experience for devs for writing and debugging E2E tests
• Focus on local testing
• Full package for all E2E tests including test runner (plug and play approach)
• Familiar JQuery syntax (cy instead of “$”)