Playwright vs Selenium in 2026: The Ultimate Guide for Modern Test Automation

Playwright is presented as a modern testing tool built for SPA and async-heavy UIs that uses persistent WebSocket/CDP connections and automatic waiting.

Selenium is described as an older, WebDriver-based tool created in 2004 that sends commands over HTTP and often requires extra infrastructure.

The article compares debugging, wait handling, and feature support, showing Playwright has built-in tracing, network mocking, and visual testing while Selenium relies more on logs and external tools.

Recommendation: prefer Playwright for new projects needing speed and stability, and keep or migrate gradually for large existing Selenium suites.