For most new web projects, Playwright is the defensible default. Recent State of JS surveys show it with high satisfaction and growing use among JavaScript developers, though survey figures vary with who answers them, so treat them as a trend rather than a market share. Playwright ships auto-waiting, parallel runs, cross-browser support (Chromium, Firefox, WebKit) and several language bindings. Selenium still fits large Java or C# enterprises, legacy browser needs and existing suites, and Cypress remains popular with frontend teams that value its debugging experience but supports only JavaScript and TypeScript. Many teams run more than one, for example Playwright for new work next to an older Selenium suite.

Under the hood, the tools differ in how they drive the browser, which explains much of the gap in speed and isolation:

| | Selenium WebDriver | Cypress | Playwright | | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | | How it drives the browser | W3C WebDriver over HTTP | Runs inside the browser, next to the app | Its own protocol over a WebSocket (CDP for Chromium) | | Test isolation | Usually a new browser session per test | Clears state between tests in one browser | A new BrowserContext per test, created in milliseconds | | Several tabs or pages | Switch between window handles | Not supported natively | Supported natively |

Sources: Playwright docs, Cypress: why Cypress, Selenium docs, State of JS, Techoral comparison