Playwright vs. Cypress 12 Performance Testing
Hey all! I'm currently doing an in depth research for my company whether or not to switch from Cypress 12 to Playwright.
My question pertains to the area of speed/load testing by looking at how well can both automation frameworks iterate through an n number of rows in a table. Currently, we are starting with 1 row and increase the number of rows by a magnitude 10. Therefore, we will have test cases for 1 row, 10 rows, 1000 rows, to 10000 rows in a table. After looking online Cypress notorious memory hog, I managed to get Cypress framework test with disabling their command window log via command line and increase the timeout to 10 minutes and and able to iterate and validate through 100000 rows in a table. Is there something similar on Playwright's side that I can look up and do to increase playwright's speed?
Note: Added screenshot for reference and the simple Cypress project to use to reproduce the test run (Please ignore the README.md file and just do "npm install" to install the necessary packages):
This thread is trying to answer question "Is there something similar on Playwright's side that I can look up and do to increase playwright's speed?"
Playwright is fast as it is, I don't think there's anything you can do to increase speed even more. However, you might see memory hogging as well. I can't find an issue now but if I remember correctly, Playwright releases memory only on closing browser context so if you'll do long living test (10 min in your example) you may see big memory consumption.
https://discord.com/channels/807756831384403968/1131775264960024696 here's the thread
Related Ask AI answer for "What are some best practices and features in Playwright to improve its speed and performance?".
Answer
Speeding Up Playwright Tests
Playwright supports parallel execution of tests. This means you can run multiple tests simultaneously. If you have many independent tests in a single file, consider running them in parallel. Here's how you can configure this:
test.describe.configure({ mode: 'parallel' })You can also shard your test suite across multiple machines with Playwright. This distributes the workload and executes tests concurrently on different machines, reducing overall execution time. Here's how to shard your test suite:
npx playwright test --shard=1/3Soft assertions are another way to improve speed. They allow your test to continue running even if an assertion fails, providing more comprehensive feedback.
Keep your Playwright dependency up to date to maximize speed and ensure compatibility with the latest browser versions. Update Playwright regularly using:
npm install -D @playwright/test@latestPlaywright offers various tools that contribute to faster development and debugging processes. The VS Code extension provides an enhanced developer experience for writing, running, and debugging tests. The trace viewer allows you to inspect DOM snapshots for each action during testing and view network requests.
By following these best practices, you can optimize the speed and performance of your Playwright tests. For more tips, check out Tips for Writing Efficient Playwright Test Scripts.
Rayrun is a community for QA engineers. I am constantly looking for new ways to add value to people learning Playwright and other browser automation frameworks. If you have feedback, email [email protected].