How to switch from Selenium to Playwright

Have you ever wondered why Selenium tests become harder to manage as applications scale?

Like most testers, I relied on Selenium for years. It was the standard-powerful, flexible, and trusted across teams.

But as our applications grew more dynamic, more time went into managing waits, reruns, and execution stability than into improving test coverage.

The shift came when I realized the challenge wasn’t our testing effort, but how much manual control Selenium required to keep tests reliable.

Exploring Playwright changed that perspective and reshaped how I approached browser automation.

This article walks through why that transition matters and how to migrate from Selenium to Playwright in a practical, structured way.

Why Consider Switching from Selenium to Playwright?

As applications grow more dynamic and release cycles become faster, many teams begin to reassess how well their automation tools support modern testing needs. While Selenium continues to be widely used, certain patterns in day-to-day testing often prompt teams to explore Playwright.

Key reasons teams consider the switch include:

• Reduced Test Maintenance: Selenium tests often require explicit waits and custom synchronization logic. Playwright’s built-in auto-waiting minimizes this overhead, making tests easier to maintain over time.
• Better Handling of Dynamic Applications: Modern web apps rely heavily on client-side rendering, network calls, and async behavior. Playwright is designed to handle these patterns more naturally.
• Improved Execution Reliability: By aligning closely with browser behavior, Playwright helps produce more consistent test results across local and CI environments.
• Faster Feedback in CI Pipelines: Native support for parallel execution and headless testing enables quicker test runs and faster release feedback.
• Simpler Test Authoring Experience: Playwright offers a cleaner API and modern tooling that helps testers focus on validating user flows rather than managing browser mechanics.

As teams begin adopting Playwright, validating tests across environments becomes just as important as improving test reliability. Running Playwright tests only locally can leave gaps that surface later in production.

Platforms like BrowserStack Automate allow teams to execute Playwright tests on a wide range of real browsers and operating systems, ensuring consistent behavior while scaling confidently as test suites grow.

Playwright tests passing locally only?

Limited environments hide issues. Run Playwright tests on real browsers to ensure cross-browser reliability.

Run your first test

Playwright vs selenium: Key Differences

Although both Selenium and Playwright are used for browser automation, they differ significantly in how they are designed and how testers interact with them. These differences become more noticeable as test suites and applications scale.

• Architecture: Selenium follows a client-server model that communicates with browsers through drivers. On the other hand, Playwright connects directly to browser engines, which helps reduce setup complexity and execution overhead.
• Wait and Synchronization Handling: Selenium relies heavily on explicit waits and custom synchronization logic to manage dynamic content. In contrast, Playwright auto-waits for elements, navigation, and network activity by default, simplifying test flow.
• Browser and Context Management: Selenium requires testers to manage browser sessions manually. Playwright, however, introduces isolated browser contexts, making parallel and independent test execution easier to implement.
• Support for Modern Web Scenarios: Handling iframes, multiple tabs, popups, and network requests in Selenium often requires additional setup. With Playwright, these scenarios are supported as part of the framework’s core design.
• Test Execution Speed: Selenium tests can slow down due to driver communication and environment setup. By comparison, Playwright’s direct browser control and native parallel execution enable faster feedback loops.
• Developer Experience: Selenium typically depends on external tools for advanced debugging. Playwright, on the other hand, offers a modern API with built-in assertions, tracing, screenshots, and video recording, reducing reliance on additional tooling.

Migration Strategy: Big Bang vs Gradual Transition

When migrating from Selenium to Playwright, defining a clear migration strategy is critical to minimizing risk and maintaining test coverage. Teams typically choose between two approaches: Big Bang migration and Gradual transition, each with distinct implications.

Big Bang Migration

A Big Bang migration involves replacing the entire Selenium test suite with Playwright in a single, consolidated effort.

• Approach: All existing Selenium tests are rewritten in Playwright before the new framework is adopted.
• Considerations: This method can simplify long-term maintenance by eliminating parallel frameworks, but it requires substantial upfront effort and careful coordination.
• Risk Profile: Due to the scale of change, this approach carries higher risk, particularly for large test suites or teams with aggressive release schedules.

Gradual Transition

A gradual transition introduces Playwright incrementally while continuing to run Selenium tests.

• Approach: Selenium and Playwright tests coexist, with critical or high-impact test scenarios migrated first.
• Considerations: This strategy allows teams to validate Playwright’s effectiveness, refine test design, and build confidence without disrupting ongoing releases.
• Risk Profile: Although it involves maintaining two frameworks temporarily, it significantly reduces migration risk and supports continuous delivery.

For most organizations, a gradual transition provides a more controlled and sustainable migration path. It balances adoption speed with stability, enabling teams to modernize their automation strategy while preserving release confidence.

Preparing Your Project for the Switch

Before converting any tests, it is important to prepare your project to support a smooth transition from Selenium to Playwright. Proper preparation reduces rework, avoids disruption to existing pipelines, and helps teams realize value from Playwright sooner.

Key preparation steps include:

• Audit the Existing Test Suite: Review current Selenium tests to identify flaky, slow, or high-maintenance scenarios. These are often the best candidates for early migration.
• Define Scope and Priorities: Decide which test types and user flows will be migrated first, focusing on critical paths that provide the highest confidence in releases.
• Align on Language and Framework Choices: Select the Playwright language binding and test runner that best aligns with your team’s existing skills and project stack.
• Prepare the Project Structure: Organize test directories, configuration files, and shared utilities to accommodate Playwright without interfering with existing Selenium tests.
• Train the Team: Ensure testers and developers understand Playwright’s async execution model, locator strategies, and built-in tooling.
• Update CI Readiness: Validate that CI environments can support Playwright execution, including browser installation, parallel runs, and artifact collection.

Taking these steps upfront helps teams avoid common migration pitfalls and ensures the transition to Playwright is deliberate, structured, and scalable.

Converting Selenium Tests to Playwright

Converting Selenium tests to Playwright is most effective when treated as a structured refactor, rather than a direct line-by-line rewrite.

While both frameworks validate similar user journeys, Playwright encourages different patterns, particularly around synchronization, element interaction, and test organization.

Key areas to address during conversion include:

• Replace WebDriver Setup with Playwright Fixtures: Selenium tests typically start by initializing a WebDriver instance and managing lifecycle manually. In Playwright, browser and page creation is handled through built-in fixtures, which simplifies setup and teardown.
• Shift from WebElements to Locators: Selenium commonly stores elements as WebElements. Playwright uses locators, which re-evaluate elements automatically and reduce failures caused by dynamic DOM updates.
• Remove Most Explicit Waits: Selenium conversions often begin with a large number of explicit waits. Playwright auto-waits for elements and navigation states, so many waits can be removed or replaced with more meaningful assertions.
• Update Assertions to Match Playwright’s Model: Selenium assertions are usually implemented through external libraries or custom wrappers. Playwright provides built-in assertions designed to work with locators and auto-waiting, improving reliability.
• Refactor Selectors for Stability: XPath-heavy or brittle CSS selectors in Selenium often require cleanup during migration. Playwright supports robust locator strategies (such as role- or text-based selectors) that improve maintainability.
• Handle Multi-Tab, Frames, and Popups Natively: Selenium often requires additional logic to switch windows or frames. Playwright provides clearer APIs for pages, frames, and popups, making these scenarios easier to automate.
• Standardize Test Utilities and Helpers: Many Selenium suites rely on custom utilities for retries, waits, and screenshots. During migration, consolidate only what is still needed and rely on Playwright’s built-in capabilities wherever possible.

A disciplined conversion process, starting with high-value flows and refactoring to Playwright-native patterns, results in cleaner tests and a smoother long-term transition.

Updating Test Design and Best Practices

Migrating to Playwright is not only a framework change-it is also an opportunity to revisit and improve overall test design. Teams that carry over Selenium patterns without adjustment often miss out on the benefits Playwright offers.

Key updates to test design and practices include:

• Adopt Locator-First Test Design: Playwright’s locator model is designed to work with dynamic content and auto-waiting. Tests should be written around stable, meaningful locators rather than tightly coupled DOM structures.
• Rely on Built-in Synchronization: Instead of managing timing through explicit waits, tests should depend on Playwright’s auto-waiting behavior and assertion-driven flow control.
• Improve Test Isolation: Use isolated browser contexts for each test to avoid shared state, ensuring reliable parallel execution and repeatable results.
• Write Assertions That Reflect User Behavior: Focus assertions on visible outcomes and user interactions rather than internal implementation details, improving test resilience.
• Simplify Setup and Teardown Logic: Replace custom Selenium hooks and utilities with Playwright’s fixtures and lifecycle management where possible.
• Leverage Built-in Debugging Capabilities: Playwright provides tracing, screenshots, and video recording out of the box. Incorporating these into failure workflows reduces debugging time.
• Align Tests with CI Execution: Design tests to run headlessly and in parallel by default, ensuring they scale naturally within CI pipelines.

CI/CD and Test Execution Considerations

As test automation moves from local execution to continuous integration environments, reliability and speed become critical. When migrating from Selenium to Playwright, it is important to reassess how tests are executed within CI/CD pipelines to ensure consistent and scalable results.

Key considerations include:

• Parallel Execution by Default: Playwright is designed to run tests in parallel, which significantly reduces execution time in CI environments when configured correctly.
• Headless-First Test Runs: CI pipelines typically execute tests in headless mode. Playwright supports this natively, enabling faster and more resource-efficient runs.
• Environment Consistency: Ensure that local, staging, and CI environments use consistent browser versions and configurations to avoid execution discrepancies.
• Failure Artifacts and Debugging: Configure pipelines to collect Playwright’s built-in artifacts, such as screenshots, videos, and traces, to speed up failure analysis.
• Resource Management: Optimize worker counts and concurrency settings to balance execution speed with infrastructure limits in shared CI environments.
• Pipeline Stability During Migration: When Selenium and Playwright coexist, clearly separate jobs and reports to prevent confusion and maintain visibility into test results.

Properly aligning Playwright test execution with CI/CD practices ensures faster feedback cycles, more reliable pipelines, and greater confidence in release readiness.

Common Migration Challenges

Migrating from Selenium to Playwright is generally straightforward, but teams often encounter predictable challenges-especially when trying to preserve existing coverage while adopting new patterns. Addressing these early helps keep the migration structured and avoids unnecessary rework.

Common challenges include:

• Treating Migration as a 1:1 Rewrite: Directly translating Selenium patterns into Playwright often leads to verbose tests and missed benefits. The migration is more effective when tests are refactored to Playwright-native practices.
• Overusing Explicit Waits: Teams frequently carry over Selenium-style waits, which can slow tests and introduce inconsistency. Playwright’s auto-waiting and assertion-driven flow reduces the need for manual timing control.
• Unstable or Low-Quality Selectors: Selenium suites often rely on brittle XPath or UI structure-based selectors. Without improving locator strategy, flakiness can persist even after switching frameworks.
• Handling Shared State and Test Isolation: Selenium suites may depend on shared sessions or sequential execution. Playwright encourages isolated contexts and parallel runs, which may require changes to test data and environment setup.
• CI Pipeline Misalignment: Migrated tests may behave differently in CI due to concurrency, environment differences, or missing artifacts. Clear pipeline configuration and consistent environments are essential.
• Skill and Mindset Shift: Playwright introduces different concepts (locators, async execution, tracing). Without onboarding and shared guidelines, teams may struggle to standardize how tests are written.

Addressing these challenges early helps teams stabilize their Playwright test suites before scaling execution. Once the migration patterns are established, the next step is to run Playwright tests reliably across browsers and environments, where scaling with BrowserStack Automate becomes essential.

Playwright tests passing locally only?

Limited environments hide issues. Run Playwright tests on real browsers to ensure cross-browser reliability.

Run your first test

Scale Playwright Tests with BrowserStack Automate

Once Playwright tests are stable locally and integrated into CI, the next challenge is scaling execution across real browsers and environments. This is where BrowserStack Automate plays a critical role.

Key benefits of scaling Playwright tests with BrowserStack Automate include:

• Real Browser and OS Coverage: Run Playwright tests on a wide range of real browsers and operating systems to validate behavior under production-like conditions.
• Massive Parallel Execution: Execute large Playwright test suites in parallel without managing infrastructure, significantly reducing overall test execution time.
• CI/CD-Friendly Integration: BrowserStack Automate integrates seamlessly with existing CI pipelines, enabling consistent execution across pull requests, builds, and releases.
• Reliable Cross-Browser Validation: Ensure Playwright tests behave consistently across browser versions and platforms, catching environment-specific issues early.
• Built-in Debugging and Observability: Access detailed logs, screenshots, videos, and execution metadata to quickly analyze failures and reduce triage time.

By combining Playwright’s modern automation capabilities with BrowserStack Automate’s real-browser cloud infrastructure, teams can scale confidently-maintaining speed, reliability, and coverage as test suites and applications grow.

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Conclusion

Migrating from Selenium to Playwright is not simply a framework change-it is a strategic step toward aligning test automation with the realities of modern web applications. By understanding the differences between the two tools, choosing the right migration approach, and updating test design practices, teams can reduce maintenance effort while improving reliability and execution speed.

A successful migration requires thoughtful planning, incremental adoption, and attention to execution in CI environments. When combined with scalable execution on real browsers through BrowserStack Automate, Playwright enables teams to maintain confidence in releases without adding operational overhead.

Approached correctly, the transition from Selenium to Playwright helps teams build a more resilient, efficient, and future-ready test automation strategy.

Useful Resources for Playwright

• Playwright Automation Framework
• Playwright Java Tutorial
• Playwright Python tutorial
• Playwright Debugging
• End to End Testing using Playwright
• Visual Regression Testing Using Playwright
• Mastering End-to-End Testing with Playwright and Docker
• Page Object Model in Playwright
• Scroll to Element in Playwright
• Understanding Playwright Assertions
• Cross Browser Testing using Playwright
• Playwright Selectors
• Playwright and Cucumber Automation

Tool Comparisons:

• Playwright vs Puppeteer
• Playwright vs Cypress
• Playwright vs Selenium
• Cypress vs Selenium vs Playwright vs Puppeteer