This text is a continuation of the first part of the article, where we outlined the strengths of Cypress and Playwright. Below, you'll find the next section, highlighting the tie points between these tools and a summary of their comparison.
Tie Points
Logging / debugging
Both Playwright and Cypress have sensational test logging and debugging mechanisms.
Playwright has a built-in test runner called UI Mode. With it, we can run and debug tests, seeing a detailed test execution timeline along with screenshots. Additionally, UI Mode provides various other data, such as console logs, network traffic, and more.
Additionally, Playwright has an excellent GUI tool called Trace Viewer, which is used to track the execution of previously run tests. If the test configuration (in the playwright.config file) is set up correctly, Playwright will generate a .zip file after each test, allowing us to create an HTML report. A sample report looks as follows:
How does it look in Cypress??
Cypress also has a desktop application for running, configuring and viewing tests – its name is the Cypress App.
However, detailed tracking, debugging, and analysis of tests take place in the previously mentioned Cypress Cloud. The tool is excellent—it provides a wealth of information about tests (logs, screenshots, network traffic—all broken down by specific test steps) and significantly simplifies their maintenance, speeds up execution, and collects historical results.
There is only one major downside to Cypress Cloud – the tool requires a paid subscription (over 50 users or 500 test results per month in the basic plan).
In my subjective opinion, Cypress offers better solutions for test management and reporting; however, it is not a free service. What Playwright provides is solid—UI Mode simplifies writing and debugging tests, while Trace Viewer is entirely sufficient for tracking their results. At the same time, using these features is completely free. For these reasons, this section is included in the tie points.
Page Object Model
For reference, the Page Object Model (POM) in test automation is a design pattern that isolates interactions with user interface elements on a web page into separate objects, known as page objects. These objects represent various UI elements, such as form fields or buttons. This approach makes tests more readable, easier to understand, and maintainable, as the logic for interacting with elements is encapsulated within dedicated objects. This, in turn, simplifies managing changes in the user interface. This pattern is widely used across most test automation frameworks.
Playwright supports and recommends the Page Object Model (POM), whereas in Cypress, while it is also possible, the creators suggest using the App Actions pattern.
Summary
Finally, it’s important to emphasize one crucial point – in my opinion, there is no single best test automation tool. The choice of a tool depends on your needs, the competencies of specialists in your team, the capabilities and limitations of a given framework, and sometimes even client requirements, budget, etc. In other words, the best automation tool is the one that meets your requirements, whose potential limitations are not a problem for you, and in which you can efficiently write stable and effective tests.
Which framework would I choose for e2e testing in a project job?
For me, Playwright is the first-choice tool for E2E automation. To summarize the arguments for this framework from the article above – Playwright is fast, stable, and its out-of-the-box features (such as auto-waits) make writing tests easier. It supports multiple programming languages, all major browsers, integrates with CI, has a low entry threshold, and comes with an excellent Trace Viewer.
When would I still lean towards using Cypress?
Honestly, only two situations come to my mind (and yes, a bit of a stretch):
- when I care about the lowest possible entry threshold – as I mentioned earlier, Cypress has a slightly simpler syntax than Playwright
- when the testing team has extensive experience with Cypress and lacks the capacity to familiarize itself with another tool
What does the future hold for both of these tools?
In my opinion, Playwright is likely to become the dominant tool in the software test automation landscape. While tools like Cypress, Selenium, and other frameworks will still be used, they will primarily serve maintenance projects. Playwright will undoubtedly emerge as the preferred choice for most new projects.
Finally, an interesting statistic
The preference of the QA community seems to be confirmed by the number of stars of the Playwright and Cypress repositories on GitHub. As of November 14, 2023, Playwright has more than 56k stars and Cypress has more than 45k. The chart below shows the timeline of this metric for both frameworks:
