Playwright
Microsoft's modern browser automation library for Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit — async-first, with auto-waiting and powerful selectors.
82
Hero Score
Popularity
88
Performance
85
Ecosystem
75
Maturity
92
Dev Experience
72
⭐ 15,033 stars⬇ 26.3M downloads/wkFirst release: Feb 2021Last release: Sep 2026
Async Support: YesPlugin Extensions: HighSpeed: FastDoc Quality: Very highLearning Curve: Medium
Pros
- • Auto-waiting eliminates most flaky-test issues found in older tools
- • Cross-browser support (Chromium, Firefox, WebKit) with a single API
- • Codegen, tracing, and built-in async make modern scraping fast and debuggable
Cons
- • Requires downloading browser binaries (~hundreds of MB)
- • Heavier than HTTP-based scrapers for simple static pages
- • Async API has a learning curve for sync-only codebases