Playwright is a Node.js library that enables reliable end-to-end testing for modern web apps. It supports Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit, automating browser interactions through a single API. Playwright simplifies creating robust tests that mimic real user actions, detect UI bugs, and ensure application stability. Its automatic waits and selectors make tests resilient to timing issues. It also provides code generation, tracing, and debugging to speed up test development.
Playwright's release frequency varies. After a long initial period with few releases, releases surged in late 2019 and throughout 2020. The pace stabilized to a few releases per month from 2021-2024, with occasional months having no releases. There were few releases in the first half of 2025, with minor increases in June, July and August. September 2025 has had no releases so far.
Playwright's npm package downloads show substantial growth from March 2024 (15.9M) to August 2025 (81.1M). A significant surge occurred throughout 2024 and the first half of 2025. September 2025's partial data (17.7M) is considerably lower, reflecting incomplete month data.
