Compare brief · Greenfield JS SPA decision
Playwright vs Cypress
Playwright vs Cypress is the single most common shortlist decision in greenfield JavaScript shops in 2026. Both are open-source runners with paid cloud overlays; both are well-engineered. The choice is shaped by parallelism, browser coverage, and the trade-offs page Cypress publishes itself.
Direct answer
open-source
Playwright
composite: 88 · pricing: public
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).
Open the Playwright brief →open-source
Cypress
composite: 72 · pricing: public
Adoption flat at ~14% in 2026 surveys; 6.5M weekly npm downloads; Cypress Cloud Team tier listed around $300/mo on the published structure.
Open the Cypress brief →Pick A when
Pick Playwright when
Cross-browser including WebKit, multi-tab tests, cross-origin in one test, deeper parallelism on a single tier.
Pick B when
Pick Cypress when
Time-travel debugging UI, friendlier author ergonomics on a small team, an existing Cypress Cloud investment.
Cost
How the cost picture differs
At 20 parallel sessions, the Playwright TCO is dominated by CI minutes; the Cypress TCO is split between Cloud results and CI minutes. At 100 parallel, Cypress's per-result pricing becomes the bigger line for high-result suites.
Open the 3-year TCO calculator →Caveats
Things this compare cannot answer
- Cypress publishes its own trade-offs reference. Read it before adopting.
- Playwright's WebKit support is best-in-class but Safari-on-iOS still needs a real-device cloud for full coverage.