Should I use Puppeteer or Playwright for headless browser scraping?
Playwright and Puppeteer are similar but Playwright has emerged as the superior choice for most projects.
Puppeteer:
Google's headless Chrome/Chromium automation tool:
- Mature project (launched 2017)
- Chrome/Chromium only (Edge support added later)
- Smaller API surface
- More tutorials and examples available
- Maintained by Chrome team
Playwright:
Microsoft's cross-browser automation tool:
- Newer (launched 2020)
- Supports Chrome, Firefox, Safari (WebKit)
- Better API design (learned from Puppeteer)
- Auto-waiting and more reliable
- Better mobile emulation
- Faster and more stable
- Built-in network interception
Key differences:
Cross-browser support:
- Puppeteer: Chrome/Chromium (Edge via chromium)
- Playwright: Chrome, Firefox, Safari/WebKit
API quality:
- Puppeteer: Good, but some quirks
- Playwright: Better designed, more intuitive
Performance:
- Playwright is generally 10-20% faster
- Better parallelization support
Stability:
- Playwright: Better auto-waiting, fewer flaky tests
- Puppeteer: Requires more manual wait handling
Code comparison:
Both are similar:
// Puppeteer
const browser = await puppeteer.launch();
const page = await browser.newPage();
await page.goto(url);
// Playwright
const browser = await playwright.chromium.launch();
const page = await browser.newPage();
await page.goto(url);
When to use Puppeteer:
- You only need Chrome/Chromium
- Existing project already uses it
- Need specific Chrome DevTools features
- Prefer Google-backed project
When to use Playwright:
- Need cross-browser testing or scraping
- Starting a new project
- Want better reliability and performance
- Need advanced features (video recording, tracing)
- Mobile browser emulation is important
Recommendation:
For new projects: Choose Playwright (better features, more maintainable). For existing Puppeteer projects: Migration is easy but not urgent. For Chrome-only work: Either is fine, but Playwright still has advantages.