Playwright as an Alternative

Playwright is a modern browser automation library developed by Microsoft. It offers better performance, reliability, and developer experience compared to Selenium.

Why Playwright?

Installing Playwright

pip install playwright
playwright install

Sync vs Async API

Basic Usage

Finding Elements

Auto-Waiting

Interactions

Extracting Data

Network Interception

Screenshots and PDFs

Complete Example

Playwright vs Selenium

Key Takeaways

• Playwright is a modern alternative to Selenium
• Auto-waiting eliminates flaky tests and timing issues
• Supports Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit (Safari)
• Has both sync and async APIs
• Built-in network interception for API capture
• Better developer experience with codegen and traces
• Recommended for new browser automation projects
• Slightly steeper learning curve but worth it