Tool brief · open-source

Playwright: lab brief

Playwright is the runner most code-first teams in 2026 reach for. Microsoft-backed, Apache 2.0, and at the centre of the modern JavaScript testing stack with 33M weekly npm downloads.

verified 2026-06-21 · vendor page

Direct answer

Our take: for greenfield React, Vue, or Next.js shops, the burden of proof now sits with anyone choosing something else. Browser coverage, parallelism, and a coherent fixture model all land in one place.

Composite

88 / 100

Strong on parallelism (92), maintainability (88), and API coverage (90). Weaker on out-of-the-box self-heal (60) compared with codeless platforms.

Pricing

Public

Free / open-source

Free under Apache 2.0. Real costs are CI minutes and engineer time. The TCO calculator treats Playwright as ~$35/mo per concurrent runner slot on top of zero licence.

Model

open source

Open-source (Apache 2.0, Microsoft)

Six axes

Per-axis measurement

Parallelism92

Self-heal60

Mobile70

API coverage90

Language breadth85

Maintainability88

When to pick

Pick Playwright when

Greenfield SPA in JavaScript or TypeScript
Teams that want code-as-source-of-truth for tests
Cross-browser coverage including WebKit

When NOT to use this tool

Native desktop applications
Salesforce / SAP / Workday surface elements
BDD-first organisations that want Gherkin as primary contract

Recent changes

What changed

Surged past Selenium in 2026 developer adoption (~45% vs ~22%); 33M weekly npm downloads; component-testing now GA; VS Code Playwright Test extension partnership with BrowserStack (Sep 2025).

Selenium to Playwright is the most common migration in 2026. The migration ledger lives on /q/migration-cost-selenium-to-playwright.

Where to go next