Exploring Browser Automation: A Comparative Study of Selenium, Cypress, Puppeteer, and Playwright

Browser automation refers to the use of specific software to perform user tasks (such as navigation among web pages, interaction with forms, etc.) automatically in a web browser. It is commonly performed programmatically for automated testing of various types of applications, web-based, cloud-based, or composed of multiple microservices, although other uses are possible (e.g., web scraping or automating repetitive tasks). For many years, Selenium has been considered the de-facto tool for browser automation. However, recently, we have witnessed the advent of alternative tools, such as Cypress, Puppeteer, or Playwright. This paper gives a comparative high-level overview and presents their architecture and key features. We expect this information will assist researchers and practitioners in making well-informed decisions regarding the browser automation tool that merits their attention.