Everyone's migrating to Playwright. But why, actually?

Short summary

Playwright is rapidly displacing Selenium in test automation due to superior automatic waits, better SPA/React handling, and built-in parallel execution—not AI magic. While AI tools like Claude and Cursor accelerate syntax generation, real migrations still require ~70% manual effort validating behavior and architecture. The genuine wins: eliminating Thread.sleep() flakiness, built-in network mocking, and a trace viewer for debugging test failures.

• •Playwright's auto-wait system eliminates Selenium's flakiness without manual sleeps or complex wait logic
• •AI accelerates boilerplate and syntax but cannot replace architectural decisions; expect 70% manual validation effort
• •Key advantages: native SPA/React support, network mocking for isolated testing, parallel execution, and trace viewer for debugging

Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.