In today’s mobile app testing market, there are multiple cross-browser testing solutions available for you like Playwright, Selenium, Cypress, and many more. But when it comes to choosing the right platform for your product, it becomes a challenging task for most of you.
When you talk about Cypress and Playwright automated testing, they prove to be superior alternatives over Selenium in automated testing and enabling dev teams to successfully test according to their product needs; while Selenium has been the de facto platform over the years.
If you are a business leader and confused about choosing the best cross-browsing testing solution for your business, this blog is for you.
What Is Playwright?
Microsoft Playwright is a growing trend in cross-browser test solutions. It was developed by the same team who brought you, Puppeteer.
Playwright can be used in many ways like Puppeteer, but Playwright has better support for Chrome, WebKit and Firefox browsers than Puppeteer.
Playwright supports Windows, macOS and Linux. It also supports Jest, Mocha and Jasmine CI servers via a single API. Playwright supports cross-language capabilities such as TypeScript, JavaScript and Python.
Playwright also has the following additional capabilities:
i) Mobile Safari enables native mobile emulation from Google Chrome for Android.
ii) Mobile rendering engine for cloud and desktop.
iii) Auto-wait, web first assertions, and trace.
iv) For the purpose of mocking and stubbing network requests, interception of network activity.
v) Native input for keyboard and mouse
vi) Upload and download files.
With playwright automated testing, you can avail other features that make it an excellent choice for testers and developers who are looking for a JavaScript-based framework to build mobile and web apps.
What Is Cypress?
Cypress, a web test automation tool that is rapidly growing, complements Selenium as the most popular web automation platform. Cypress is an end-to-end framework that supports testing from creation to execution. It is highly valued by front-end developers and test automation engineers for its ability to allow them to create automated web tests in JavaScript.
Cypress 10 has been launched. It includes additional features like component testing, a migration assistant and an updated UX/UI experience. This makes it a more widely-used testing tool.
Additional capabilities include:
i) Time travel (or real-time debugging of apps)
ii) Testing APIs and network control
iii) Innovative component testing, mocking, or stubbing.
iv) AXE accessibility and additional plugins
v) Additional features were added to the Cypress 10 update.
Cypress is now a reliable JavaScript-based web testing solution for developers, engineers and testers.
What Is Selenium?
Selenium WebDriver and Selenium IDE are the most popular open-source web application testing frameworks. Selenium Grid is also part of Selenium WebDriver. This comprehensive suite of tools allows developers and testers to experience robust browser-based regression testing.
It includes language-specific support, the ability to scale and distribute scripts across environments, recording, playback, and analysis of browser interactions on Chrome and Edge, as well as automated exploratory testing, bug recreation scripts, and automatic testing.
It is still the preferred platform for developers and testing teams because of its many offerings. However, platforms like Playwright or Cypress are gaining ground in the testing sphere to complement Selenium and sometimes even replace Selenium depending on the application's testing needs.
Which Cross-Browser Platform Would Be Best For You?
After we have discussed the details of each automated testing platform let's compare Playwright and Cypress to get a better understanding of which tool is best suited for your situation.
Playwright vs. Cypress
Although both platforms are designed to test end-to-end, Cypress and Playwright approach the testing process differently. Cypress can be described as a "package offer" compared to Playwright. It generates a folder system that contains example files. However, testers must stay within the framework of the existing test runners.
Playwright, on the other side, does not create files. You can choose your test runner framework. Playwright supports multiple browsers and offers more flexibility than Cypress.
The code used to create each test solution is another crucial difference. Cypress is well-known for its ability to automate JavaScript testing, while Playwright can support multiple languages, including JavaScript and JavaScript. Cypress also runs on Mocha, Jest and Jasmine, while Playwright has test runner frameworks for JavaScript, Python, and JavaScript.
The best choice between Playwright and Cypress testing will depend on your specific application requirements and the degree of flexibility you need to run your automated test.
Playwright vs. Selenium
Selenium and Playwright are web testing tools that perform similar functions, although they have different architectures and feature offerings. Selenium is a more established web testing solution that supports many browsers and languages. It also offers a wide range of support features. Playwright, a newcomer in the web testing world, offers more features than Selenium. It is also specifically designed for modern web usage and runs at high speeds, even for more complicated testing cases.
Selenium uses WebDriver API for communication between multiple web browsers and drivers. It works by translating test results into JSON and then sending them back to the browsers. The browsers then return an HTTP response.
Playwright, on the other hand, uses WebSocket instead of HTTP and WebDriver. WebSocket is always open during a test. This keeps all interactions in one connection, increasing execution speed and reducing the time it takes.
Selenium is more popular than Playwright due to its long-term success in browser and language support. However, Playwright is rapidly gaining popularity in these areas. Although Selenium is always in development to add new features, Playwright offers already superior capabilities in speed, efficiency and adaptability to modern testing environments.
Cypress vs. Selenium
Cypress is more focused on developers than Selenium. However, Selenium remains the longest-running framework for testing and can still be referred to as the most developer-oriented framework. Both tools excel in their operation and final results, but they approach testing differently.
Cypress Testing has a smaller scope of integrations, but developers won't have to worry about setting up complex environments during setup.
Selenium provides robust browser support and hosts most languages, including JavaScript, Python and C#. Cypress, however, remains solely JavaScript-based.
Although Cypress and Selenium offer different perspectives on testing, they both provide excellent tools to achieve high-quality results.
Conclusion
The final decision on which cross-platform test solution to use comes down to the features that are most important for your application and the testing method that best suits your product.
Playwright vs. Cypress and Selenium are compared based on the value you place on your testing experience. Although Playwright is a more recent offering, it offers seamless and speedy testing that's in line with the modern web.
Cypress, which is JavaScript-based, excels in providing developer-focused testing and serves as an excellent complement to Selenium.
Selenium, the trusted and most popular testing platform, supports many browsers and languages.
No matter which platform you choose, Playwright vs. Cypress or Selenium, Lambdatest works perfectly with all of these cross-browser testing platforms. It offers continuous support and testing, as well as end-to-end support.
Lambdatest allows developers and testers to deliver high-quality apps quickly.
- Test coverage boosted
- Parallel testing allows for quicker test executions.
- Automated test automation that is stable and scalable.
- Continuous testing, security testing, functional testing and more.
Hopefully, now it's your turn to choose the best cross-platform for your product and streamline your business growth.
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