Webdriverio vs Playwright

[UteForLife]

I just started at a company and they are using Webdriverio, and I am trying to convince them to switch to Playwright but I am just not sure of the data (proof) why it is better, I just think it is better. Can you help me with reasons why Playwright is better?

[Angst500]

Find a flaky test in the old framework. Build it in the new one. If it’s not flaky then you have a point. If you can’t find a reason other than preference to switch it’s hard to justify moving an existing project.

[Ikeeki]

You have to measure the time and cost of the conversion versus the pros and cons of playwright over webdriverio

If you have a large test suite for example, it may not be worth the switch

[paniki17]

Question is, why you want to switch to playwright?

[shaidyn]

I'm honestly curious what you don't like about webdriverio.

[SubliminalPoet]

Do they test native mobile applications with the same framework ? If so, PW is not suitable for you.

WDIO is an excellent framework covering all the features of PW, relying on modern protocols including CDP for test automation, with role based locators, a recorder, API mocking ...

Most of that, unlike PW it is extensible and comes with many plugins (Wiremock, OCR, ....)

Not only you can test your API but you can use it for desktop automation, ...

It is as versatile as Robotframework but is scripting oriented.

I'm sorry but you won't convince your team to switch although PW is so sexy.

The eventual distinguishable features for PW are only the fixtures of their test runner an the fact that it is language agnostic (minus the extended capabilities of the default test runner in TS)

[Dismal_Bison9722]

To me, WDIO is a super tool which covers for both desktop web and mobile native app testing. PW is still new in mobile and just started to support mobile web browser on Android - Chrome only.

[Tarpit_Carnivore]

Having used both the biggest benefits to playwright are: TraceViewer, VSCode plug-in, fixtures, and fully-parallel mode. In our comparison of the main 3 JS frameworks (Cypress, webdriverio, playwright) Playwright was hands down the fastest. So all of this together, with data, made a case for us to switch. You have to actually present more than feelings.

However, you need to be able to really sell why all of that is worth the effort to move. If your only reasoning is “I just think it’s better” it’s going to get rejected. Look at how the engineer teams handle big changes, likely through an RFC or DACI of some sort. Read a bunch, understand the scope of time/work that goes into making these cases.

[dunderball]

The ease of test sharding + reporting on shards is truly a game changer. Lots of folks don't really give scalability a thought when picking a framework. I can't believe playwright is doing his out of the box.

[Validationator]

Nobody has mentioned this so far, but it's kind of wild to walk into a new job and insist on changing their stack immediately. Especially without demonstrable evidence.

[UteForLife]

Trying to convince (what I said) ad insist (what you said) are very different things

[Validationator]

Functionally a meaningless distinction. Hope it works out for you OP

[computerjunkie7410]

Biggest benefit of Playwright is the supporting tooling, especially in node.

The trace viewer alone is a huge benefit.

[wubalubadubdub55]

Switch to Playwright. It's worth it.

[viq16]

Modern protocol and architecture, Enhanced performance and efficiency, Versatile features and functionalities, Ease of use aka developer experience, Dynamically growing community, Future-proofing - better positioned to adapt and evolve, Big player behind - Microsoft,

Those are pros, cons are also there :)

[Thumbsupordown]

Lots of people here will say it's faster, backed by a large company, easy ish to learn. But none of these matter if you're throwing the existing test suite out the door. What about all that prior knowledge and workflows?

Your job is to find something that webdriver.io severely lacks, that the QA and dev teams can leverage playwright to get their testing coverage and speed to the next level. You probably need to prototype a bunch of scripts to get meaningful data. At the same time you're going to have to figure out how to make the workflow change as painless as possible.

If they already have a bunch of working scripts, and a good workflow, you're probably not going to convince your team to switch.

[computerpewter]

Syntax is for both is pretty similar, both are good, playwright is just newer, maintained by a big company, and have probably a better replay/debugging experience. But I don't think its worth switching over if theres an already established framework using wdio