Selenium

Selenium was the industry standard for browser automation for over a decade. That era is over. Playwright offers better APIs, faster execution, built-in auto-waiting, multi-browser support, and a debugging experience that Selenium never matched.

The WebDriver protocol is the core problem. Selenium communicates with browsers through an intermediary driver process, adding latency and fragility. Playwright uses the Chrome DevTools Protocol directly — faster, more reliable, and capable of things Selenium simply cannot do: network interception, multi-tab testing, and trace recording out of the box.