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Cypress vs Playwright
Trust Score comparison · March 2026
VS
Trust Score Δ
5
🏆 Playwright wins
Signal Comparison
6.5M/wkWeekly npm downloads9M/wk
210GitHub commits (90d)520
48kGitHub stars68k
52kStack Overflow questions22k
ActiveCommunity healthExcellent
CypressPlaywright
Key Differences
| Factor | Cypress | Playwright |
|---|---|---|
| License | MIT | Apache 2.0 |
| Language | TypeScript / JavaScript | TypeScript / Python |
| Hosted | Self-hosted | Self-hosted |
| Free tier | — | ✓ Yes |
| Open Source | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| TypeScript | ✓ | ✓ |
Pick Cypress if…
- E2E testing with visual time-travel debugging
- Component testing for React/Vue/Angular in a real browser
- Your team prefers an interactive test runner over headless CI
Pick Playwright if…
- E2E browser testing across Chrome, Firefox, Safari
- You need visual regression, network mocking, or file downloads
- CI pipeline testing — Playwright's Docker image is battle-tested
Side-by-side Quick Start
Cypress
// cypress/e2e/login.cy.ts
describe('Login flow', () => {
it('logs in successfully', () => {
cy.visit('/login');
cy.get('[data-cy="email"]').type('user@example.com');
cy.get('[data-cy="password"]').type('password123');
cy.get('[data-cy="submit"]').click();
cy.url().should('include', '/dashboard');
cy.contains('Welcome back').should('be.visible');
});
});Playwright
// tests/example.spec.ts
import { test, expect } from '@playwright/test';
test('homepage has correct title', async ({ page }) => {
await page.goto('https://example.com');
await expect(page).toHaveTitle(/Example Domain/);
await page.getByRole('link', { name: 'More information' }).click();
await expect(page).toHaveURL(/iana.org/);
});Community Verdict
Based on upvoted notes🏆
Playwright wins this comparison
Trust Score 90 vs 85 · 5-point difference
Playwright leads on Trust Score with stronger signal data across downloads and community health. That said, the other tool is worth considering if your use case matches its specific strengths above.