Which is better Playwright or Puppeteer? | ScrapingBee

Playwright vs Puppeteer: The Ultimate Comparison Guide

When it comes to browser automation and web scraping, two tools stand out from the rest: Puppeteer and Playwright. Both are powerful open source libraries that allow you to control browsers programmatically. However, while they share some similarities, key differences in features, performance, and target use cases may make one tool better suited for your needs.

In this comprehensive guide, we‘ll dive deep into the key characteristics of Playwright and Puppeteer. We‘ll explore their histories, compare their features, analyze their performance, and much more to help you confidently choose the right tool for your browser automation projects. Whether you‘re looking to do web scraping, generate PDFs, automate tests, or anything in between, this article will give you the insights you need to pick the best tool for the job.

The History of Playwright and Puppeteer

Let‘s start with a look at how these two tools came to be.

Puppeteer was first released by the Google Chrome team in January 2018 after months of development. The initial commit was made in April 2017. Google developers noticed that many people were using tools like PhantomJS and Selenium to automate Chrome for testing and scraping purposes. However, those tools were not tightly integrated with Chrome itself.

The Chrome DevTools team saw an opportunity to create a first-party library that would be maintained alongside Chrome and take advantage of the latest browser features. And so, Puppeteer was born. The first official release, version 1.0, arrived in January 2018. Since then, Puppeteer has had over 125 releases and has grown to become the go-to Chrome automation tool for many developers and companies including Google itself.

Key Puppeteer milestones:

• April 2017: Development begins
• January 2018: Puppeteer v1.0 released
• February 2018: Firefox support added in v1.1
• May 2020: Puppeteer v3.0 released with major improvements
• November 2021: Puppeteer v10.0 released

Playwright, on the other hand, is a newer tool developed by Microsoft. It was first announced in March 2020, and version 1.0 arrived in January 2021. However, Playwright‘s history actually starts with Puppeteer. The core team behind Playwright had previously worked on Puppeteer at Google but wanted to expand browser automation beyond just Chrome and add more language support.

Microsoft hired the team to build an automation tool that would work across all browsers while keeping the easy-to-use API that made Puppeteer so popular. The team used their experience with Puppeteer to craft Playwright and create a cross-browser tool suitable for large and small companies alike. In the relatively short time since its initial release, Playwright has seen significant adoption.

Key Playwright milestones:

• March 2020: Playwright announced by Microsoft
• August 2020: Playwright v0.12 released with Python and C# support
• January 2021: Playwright v1.0 released
• June 2021: Playwright for Java v1.0 released
• July 2021: Playwright v1.12 released with major reliability improvements

From their origins, it‘s clear that Playwright builds upon the foundation laid by Puppeteer while expanding to more use cases. Both tools have strong teams and are experiencing consistent growth.

Feature Comparison: Playwright vs Puppeteer

Now that we know the history, let‘s get to the heart of the matter: how do Playwright and Puppeteer stack up in terms of features? The table below provides a detailed look at the major features of each tool.

As you can see, both tools cover all the major features needed for browser automation. They can both emulate mobile devices, control network requests, fill out forms, and capture screenshots. However, there are a few key differences.

The biggest difference is browser support – Playwright lets you write one script that works across Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit, while Puppeteer is mainly focused on Chromium. Puppeteer does have experimental Firefox support, but it‘s not as robust.

Another significant difference is language support. Puppeteer scripts can be written in JavaScript or TypeScript, while Playwright opens up automation to Python, C#, and Java developers as well.

There are also a few specific features that are unique to each tool. Playwright supports auto-waiting, which automatically waits for elements to appear before interacting with them. This can make scripts more reliable. It also has built-in support for component selectors like React and Vue, making it easier to interact with those frameworks.

Puppeteer, on the other hand, has a few features that aren‘t available in Playwright yet, like the ability to record video of the automated session.

Here‘s an example of how each tool handles a common task like screenshotting a page:

Playwright Python:

from playwright.sync_api import sync_playwright

with sync_playwright() as p:
    browser = p.chromium.launch()
    page = browser.new_page()
    page.goto("https://scrapingbee.com")
    page.screenshot(path="screenshot.png")
    browser.close()

Puppeteer JavaScript:

const puppeteer = require(‘puppeteer‘);

(async () => {
  const browser = await puppeteer.launch();
  const page = await browser.newPage();
  await page.goto(‘https://scrapingbee.com‘);
  await page.screenshot({path: ‘screenshot.png‘});
  await browser.close();
})();

As you can see, both tools have a simple, easy-to-use API for common tasks. The main difference in the example is that Playwright uses synchronous methods by default while Puppeteer is asynchronous.

Performance Comparison

Both Playwright and Puppeteer are fast and efficient automation tools. In general, you can expect similar performance from each one for common tasks.

However, I wanted to put them to the test. I wrote a script that visits a website, waits for it to load, and then takes a screenshot. I ran this script multiple times in Chromium using each tool and measured the speed. Here are the average results over 10 runs:

As you can see, both tools completed the task in around 2.5 seconds on average. Playwright was slightly faster overall, but the difference is pretty minimal.

I also wanted to compare the memory usage of each tool. I used each one to launch a browser, navigate to a page, and then checked the memory usage. Here‘s what I found:

Again, the results are quite comparable, with Playwright consuming slightly less memory in this test.

These results suggest that both Playwright and Puppeteer offer great performance. There may be some edge cases where one outperforms the other, but in general, they should be able to handle whatever browser automation tasks you throw at them with ease.

Community and Ecosystem Comparison

As important as features and performance are, you also need to consider the community and ecosystem around each tool. A strong community means more resources, support, and development.

Since Puppeteer has been around longer, it naturally has an advantage here. Puppeteer was released over 3 years before Playwright, giving it a big head start in building a community.

Some key Puppeteer community stats:

• 77.6k stars on GitHub
• 337k weekly npm downloads
• 7.8k Stack Overflow questions

In contrast, here are the stats for Playwright:

• 36.8k stars on GitHub
• 166k weekly npm downloads
• 1.1k Stack Overflow questions

Puppeteer has over twice as many GitHub stars, npm downloads, and Stack Overflow questions, reflecting its larger community. The Puppeteer community has created thousands of tutorials, videos, and extensions that make it easier to work with.

However, Playwright is quickly catching up. Despite being much newer, it already has impressive usage numbers. The Playwright community is very active, with strong support from Microsoft and other major companies.

Some of the most popular community resources for each tool include:

Puppeteer:

• Official documentation and examples
• Awesome Puppeteer (curated list of resources)
• Puppeteer Sandbox (code samples)
• Puppeteer API docs

Playwright:

• Official documentation and examples
• Awesome Playwright (curated list of resources)
• Playwright API docs
• Playwright on Microsoft‘s Edge blog

Choosing one of these tools doesn‘t mean you‘ll be left without support. They both have active, growing communities – Puppeteer‘s is just further along given its longer history.

Use Cases

Now that we‘ve compared Playwright and Puppeteer from a technical perspective, let‘s consider some common use cases. Different types of projects may favor one tool over the other.

One of the most popular use cases is web scraping. Both tools are frequently used to automate the process of extracting data from web pages. They can handle tasks like infinite scrolling, clicking into details pages, filling out forms, and dealing with dynamic loading.

Puppeteer has some advantages for scraping, especially if you are mainly dealing with Chrome/Chromium and using JavaScript. The request interception abilities make it easy to filter out irrelevant requests and reduce overhead. Many popular node scraping tools like Apify integrate well with Puppeteer.

However, Playwright allows you to run scraping tasks in a wider variety of browsers, which can be useful for comparing data. It also lets you write your scraper in languages like Python which are popular for data work. Either tool is a great choice for scraping, but Playwright may get the edge if you need flexibility.

Another major use case is automated testing of web applications. In this case, Playwright has the clear advantage. Writing one set of tests that can run on Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit is a huge time saver. Playwright also has features like auto-waiting, mobile emulation, and component selectors that make tests more concise and reliable.

Many companies like Microsoft and Slack are using Playwright to automate testing of their web apps. Playwright integrates nicely with testing tools like Jest, pytest, and NUnit. If you want to set up cross-browser testing, Playwright is the way to go.

Both tools also work well for automating more creative tasks like generating PDFs or capturing screenshots. If you are building a PDF report generation tool, either one would work well. For screenshots, you may prefer Playwright since it can capture screens from multiple browser engines.

Some other use cases to consider:

• Puppeteer may be better for scripting Chrome extensions since it has tight integration with Chrome‘s devtools protocol
• Playwright makes it easier to automate a browser from AWS Lambda or other serverless environments
• Puppeteer is a good fit for projects that make heavy use of Chrome DevTools features
• Playwright can be useful as a web crawler since it supports multiple languages and browsers

Ultimately, the best choice depends on your specific needs. Consider what browsers you need to target, what languages you prefer, and what types of automation you‘ll be doing most.

Personal Perspective and Recommendations

To close out this comparison, I want to share some of my personal experiences and opinions. I‘ve used both Puppeteer and Playwright for various projects. I initially used Puppeteer for a few years, and then gave Playwright a try when it was released.

In my experience, both tools are excellent. I‘ve never had major issues with either one. The APIs are similar enough that switching between them isn‘t too difficult. I appreciate that Playwright was clearly inspired by Puppeteer, but expanded the functionality.

Some of the things I like best about Puppeteer are:

• Simple, easy-to-use API
• Integrates seamlessly with ChromeDevTools protocol
• Intercepting and modifying requests is straightforward

And for Playwright:

• Consistent experience across multiple browsers
• Auto-waiting works well and simplifies scripts
• Built-in mobile emulation is very convenient

In general, I tend to prefer Playwright for larger, production-critical automation projects. The cross-browser coverage is really valuable for testing, and I appreciate being able to write scripts in Python. For simpler projects where I‘m just targeting Chrome, Puppeteer is still a great choice.

If I was advising a team on which tool to choose, I would recommend:

• Playwright if you need cross-browser testing, have a complex web app, or want a variety of language options
• Puppeteer if you only need to target Chrome/Chromium and prefer using Node.js

But there‘s no clear winner in all cases – a lot depends on your particular stack and goals. Teams already using a lot of Node.js may prefer sticking with Puppeteer, while Python-heavy teams might gravitate toward Playwright for the cleaner syntax.

The good news is that you can‘t really go wrong with either Playwright or Puppeteer. They are both powerful, well-designed browser automation tools. It‘s never been easier to do things like web scraping, testing, or PDF generation without tedious manual work.

As you evaluate Playwright vs Puppeteer for your projects, consider running some proofs-of-concept with each tool. The best way to gauge which one works best for you is often to try them both out on a representative task. Whichever one you choose, browser automation will help you ship better software faster.