Testplane now supports test run selectivity — the ability to automatically run only those tests whose dependency files have changed.

Both Testplane and Playwright are end-to-end testing solutions, but they have different approaches and capabilities. In this article, we'll conduct a detailed comparison of these tools to help you make the right choice.

Brief Tool Overview​

Testplane is a web application test automation tool developed by the Yandex team. It is actively used in both large and small company projects and supports a wide range of browsers and devices.

Playwright is a tool from Microsoft that has quickly gained popularity due to its ease of use and modern approach to automation.

Key Differences​

Browser and Mobile Device Support​

One of Testplane's key advantages is its versatility in working with desktop browsers and mobile devices. Unlike Playwright, which focuses on modern desktop browsers of the latest versions, Testplane provides full support for both old and new browser versions. This is important for companies that work with users using outdated browsers. A complete comparison of the two approaches can be seen in the table below:

Visual Testing​

In the area of visual (screenshot) testing, Testplane demonstrates clear superiority over Playwright. Under the hood, the tool uses its own looks-same library for screenshot comparison, which is faster and more accurate than current competitors:

• Waiting for elements to load before taking screenshots to eliminate test instability;
• Disabling animations on the page;
• Flexible configuration of screenshot testing sensitivity — tolerance, anti-aliasing tolerance, ignoring a fixed number of pixels;
• Uses 3 levels of comparison for speed optimization;
• Various types of visualization of differences between screenshots for convenient debugging, including highlighting small diffs;
• Ignoring elements in screenshots when necessary.

Testplane provides a convenient interface for bulk screenshot acceptance, which speeds up the process of updating reference images. Also, if Storybook is configured in the user's project, Testplane provides automatic generation of screenshot tests, which allows you to quickly cover all project components with visual checks without writing code.

Playwright offers only basic screenshot testing support with limited capabilities and a less convenient interface for working with screenshots. This makes it less suitable for projects where visual testing is important.

Test Report Interface​

Testplane has a graphical interface that not only shows the results of your test execution but also provides extensive capabilities for working with them.

This report is perfect for both local work and use in CI. It offers a unified interface for performing various tasks:

• Running tests directly from the UI;
• Debugging with Time Travel (step-by-step test replay);
• Test performance analysis;
• Updating reference images in screenshot testing;
• Merging multiple reports into one;
• Reusing results from CI.

It's especially important that Testplane's report can efficiently work with thousands of tests without losing performance. The plugin system allows customizing reports for specific team needs.

You can explore all report capabilities in the UI section of the https://testplane.io website.

AI Integration​

Testplane MCP is a tool that allows AI agents to immerse themselves in the context of what's happening in the browser, perform actions, and create or fix tests based on the real state of the page. With Testplane MCP, users can not only create working and stable tests but also quickly fix existing ones. Testplane MCP allows connecting to the browser during your test execution to debug or modify it. This significantly reduces the time spent fixing unstable tests. Additionally, Testplane MCP provides the ability to run the browser in mobile device emulation mode. For example, you can say "Open example.com page using Testplane MCP on iPhone 15" or explicitly specify which User Agent should be used when creating a browser session.

Extensibility and Integrations​

Testplane's architecture is built with customization and integration needs in mind. The rich event model provides numerous extension points, allowing developers to inject their own logic at any stage of test execution. This is especially important for projects that require integration with internal monitoring, reporting, and quality management systems. Testplane also provides a JS API that allows creating custom runners adapted to specific project needs.

Playwright, despite its popularity, offers fewer extension points and requires independent development of most integrations. This increases the time for implementation and maintenance of the tool in a corporate environment.

Scaling and Performance​

Testplane's architecture was initially designed to work with large volumes of tests, ensuring stable operation even with significant growth in test coverage. This is especially important for long-term projects where the number of tests constantly increases. Support for remote browser grids (e.g., BrowserStack, SauceLabs, etc.) allows efficient distribution of test execution across multiple machines, ensuring fast execution even of very large test suites. Testplane also allows scaling runs through sharding, running tests on different machines. As a result, the user will be provided with a unified report with the results of passed tests.

Playwright also has scaling capabilities in the form of out-of-the-box sharding. Scaling through remote grid is provided only as a paid service Microsoft Playwright Testing.

Updates and Stability​

Testplane ensures high stability through a thoughtful approach to dependency management. Tool updates are completely decoupled from browser updates, allowing teams to control the migration process and avoid unexpected failures in CI/CD pipelines. Using stable browser versions minimizes screenshot retaking issues, which is especially important for projects with many visual tests. This approach ensures predictable test behavior and reduces testing infrastructure maintenance costs. Teams can plan browser updates independently of the testing tool updates, providing more flexibility in managing technical debt.

Playwright links tool updates with browser updates, which can lead to unexpected changes in test behavior. This creates additional burden on development teams who have to more frequently review and update screenshots, especially in projects with active interface development.

Selection Recommendations​

Choose Playwright if:​

✅ Testing only in the latest desktop browsers is sufficient
✅ You're confident that support for old browser versions won't be needed
✅ Visual testing is not required

Choose Testplane if:​

✅ Visual testing with convenient reporting is important
✅ Future scaling will be required
✅ Customization for specific needs is important
✅ Testing across a wide range of desktop browsers and mobile devices is necessary
✅ Testing of native Android and iOS applications is required

We're excited to present Testplane MCP — a project that allows AI agents to be aware of what's happening in the browser, perform actions, and generate tests based on the real state of the page.

We're presenting a new Testplane UI tool — Time Travel, now stable! Let's talk about this new functionality and what else has been added to Testplane UI recently.

Support for the WebDriver BiDi protocol (the future unified standard for browser automation) has been added in testplane@8.27.0.

Testplane is now able to automatically download browsers for running tests locally. Enjoy a hassle-free start with --local option if you don't need remote browser grid.

We have implemented an extension for [VS Code][vscode] for Testplane, which allows you to configure Testplane from scratch, run tests, and conveniently work with the REPL mode.

Now, for automatic visual testing of your components, you only need Storybook with your components and the @testplane/storybook plugin. There’s no need to write any tests anymore.

In testplane, experimental support for component testing and unit tests running in the browser has been added.

We present to your attention... Testplane. Our project Hermione has decided to change its name — meet the time-tested product in a fresh look!