Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

html2canvas VS Playwright

Compare html2canvas VS Playwright and see what are their differences

html2canvas logo html2canvas

JavaScript library to take "screenshots" of webpages or parts of it, directly on the...

Playwright logo Playwright

Playwright is automation software for Chromium, Firefox, Webkit using the Node.js library having a single API in place.
  • html2canvas Landing page
    Landing page //
    2019-09-15
  • Playwright Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-22

html2canvas features and specs

  • Client-Side Rendering
    html2canvas is a client-side library that can capture screenshots of web pages without requiring server-side processing, making it easy to integrate into web applications.
  • Open-Source
    Being open-source, developers have access to the source code, allowing them to modify and contribute to the project, ensuring transparency and community-driven improvements.
  • Ease of Use
    It provides a straightforward API, making it accessible for developers to quickly implement and use the library to capture screenshots.
  • Cross-Browser Support
    The library aims to support multiple browsers, enhancing its usability across different user platforms.

Possible disadvantages of html2canvas

  • Rendering Limitations
    html2canvas may not fully support all CSS properties or web elements, leading to inaccurate or incomplete screenshots in some cases.
  • Performance Overheads
    As a JavaScript library running in the browser, it may lead to increased CPU and memory usage, especially for large or complex web pages.
  • Security Concerns
    Rendering content on the client side may expose sensitive information within the page during the rendering process, posing security risks if not handled carefully.
  • Lack of Dynamic Content Handling
    Dynamic content like videos, animations, or elements with JavaScript-based changes during rendering might not be accurately captured.

Playwright features and specs

  • Cross-Browser Testing
    Playwright supports testing on Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit, providing comprehensive coverage across different browsers, thus ensuring greater compatibility and a wider test reach.
  • Auto-Wait Mechanism
    Playwright automatically waits for elements to be actionable before performing interactions, reducing the need for explicit wait commands and helping to make tests more reliable and less flaky.
  • Headless Testing
    Playwright supports headless mode for all browsers, which allows for faster test execution and reduced resource consumption, making it ideal for continuous integration systems.
  • Context Isolation
    Playwright introduces the concept of browser contexts, which allows for isolated execution environments within a single browser instance. This enables parallel testing with reduced overhead.
  • Extensive API
    Playwright offers a wide range of APIs that cover user interactions, network interception, and browser automation, providing developers with powerful tools to create robust tests.
  • Network Interception
    Playwright can intercept and modify network requests and responses, allowing for advanced testing scenarios such as mocking APIs and simulating different network conditions.
  • Strong Documentation
    Playwright provides thorough and detailed documentation, making it easier for developers to learn and effectively utilize the framework.
  • Rich Debugging Features
    The framework includes features like verbose logging and debugging capabilities, which facilitate easier troubleshooting and quicker resolution of issues.
  • Support for Multiple Languages
    Playwright supports multiple programming languages, including JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, C#, and Java, offering flexibility to developers based on their preference.
  • Community and Support
    The Playwright project has an active community and regular updates, ensuring continuous improvement and access to support from both the community and the development team.

Possible disadvantages of Playwright

  • Steeper Learning Curve
    Due to its extensive capabilities and API, Playwright might have a steeper learning curve for beginners compared to some simpler testing tools.
  • Performance Overhead
    While Playwright aims to be efficient, its feature-rich nature can sometimes introduce performance overhead, particularly for complex test suites.
  • Evolving Ecosystem
    The relatively rapid development and updates can occasionally lead to breaking changes, requiring teams to frequently update their test scripts.
  • Less Mature Ecosystem
    Compared to more established tools like Selenium, Playwright's ecosystem is still maturing, which may result in fewer third-party plugins and integrations.
  • Limited Browser Versions
    Playwright's focus on modern browsers and web standards might make it difficult to test older browser versions or niche browsers, potentially limiting test coverage for legacy systems.
  • Resource Intensive
    Running multiple browser contexts and handling extensive network interception can be resource-intensive, requiring more powerful hardware or cloud resources for large test suites.

html2canvas videos

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Playwright videos

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More videos:

  • Review - Playwright Brittany K. Allen wins 2021 Georgia Engel Comedy Playwriting Prize

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to html2canvas and Playwright)
Browser Testing
29 29%
71% 71
Development
14 14%
86% 86
Automated Testing
18 18%
82% 82
Tool
100 100%
0% 0

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare html2canvas and Playwright

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Playwright Reviews

Top Selenium Alternatives
Playwright offers a modern approach with auto-wait APIs and more native support for modern web features compared to Selenium's more manual and broad approach. While Selenium requires explicit waits and has a broader language support, Playwright focuses on simplifying cross-browser testing with its unified API and auto-wait features, which might reduce setup and test...
Source: bugbug.io
Top 5 Selenium Alternatives for Less Maintenance
Appium and Playwright closely resemble Selenium in terms of functionality but offer unique features and advantages. Both of these solutions require coding experience. Leapwork, a commercial vendor, uses Selenium under the hood to power their visual automation approach.
20 Best JavaScript Frameworks For 2023
Playwright, a Node.js library created by Microsoft, is considered one of the best JavaScript frameworks for testing. It automates Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit with a single API. Developers building JavaScript code can use these APIs to build new browser pages, go to URLs, and interact with page elements. Additionally, Playwright can automate Microsoft Edge since it is based...

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Playwright seems to be a lot more popular than html2canvas. While we know about 279 links to Playwright, we've tracked only 16 mentions of html2canvas. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

html2canvas mentions (16)

  • Build a Finance Tracker with Next.js, Strapi, and Chartjs: Part 3
    We'll use three libraries - html-to-pdfmake, pdfmake and html2canvas for the printing functionality. - Source: dev.to / 9 months ago
  • Build a Finance Tracker with Next.js, Strapi, and Chartjs: Part 1
    Html2canvas to take screenshots of the webpage directly on the browser. - Source: dev.to / 9 months ago
  • This weird IFRAME thing wasted my 2 days (and counting...)
    My new approach: Whenever user will open the preview and it would load completely, I will take a screenshot programatically using html2canvas library and later store in the db. I wrote code and it worked as I thought except for one part. Everything was fine in the screenshot, except the preview part. IT WAS BLANK, LIKE COMPLETELY BLANK. Oh my god! How is this possible? What on earth is wrong that every solution I... - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • A Firefox-Only Minimap
    That's slightly harder, but still possible by first rendering the HTML onto a canvas. Example here: http://html2canvas.hertzen.com/. - Source: Hacker News / almost 2 years ago
  • Adding text to image that scales to fit container?
    If you have it working in the browser you could use this.https://html2canvas.hertzen.com/. Source: about 2 years ago
View more

Playwright mentions (279)

  • Design Pattern for Playwright End-to-End Testing
    This article introduces a design pattern for end-to-end testing using Playwright. This pattern is an extension of the Page Object Model, aimed at improving test code readability and reducing the increase in code volume when adding more test scenarios or test data variations. This pattern is adopted by SVQK. A working implementation example and its test results are available in the following repositories:. - Source: dev.to / 5 days ago
  • Why the Python Standard Library Needs a run_sync()
    I recently updated a small script I wrote to automate file uploads to a website with no API. It uses the excellent Playwright project to drive a browser - making the tedious task of filling out forms painless. - Source: dev.to / 10 days ago
  • No Dockerfile? No problem! Running Node and Python MCPs with ToolHive
    E.g. If you’re interested in running the Playwright MCP, simply do:. - Source: dev.to / 11 days ago
  • SVQK - A Web Application Development Platform Using Svelte + Quarkus
    This command not only sets up the tools and scripts but also runs tests to verify that the tools and applications work as expected. The tests include unit tests for backend components, integration tests for manipulating Web APIs using a Rest Client, and end-to-end tests for frontend operations using Playwright. This setup command can be executed both on a local PC and in a CI environment. - Source: dev.to / 13 days ago
  • How to Chat with Gemini 2.5 Pro from VSCode via AI Studio (Free and Unlimited)
    My first idea was to run an instance of Chrome and control it using Playwright. So I created a file browser.ts and wrote the following code to:. - Source: dev.to / 20 days ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing html2canvas and Playwright, you can also consider the following products

Html Screen Capture JS - Html Screen Capture JS is an open-source, lightweight, and fully customizable javascript/typescript library that captures a complete layout or a few areas of a layout and saves it in a mini HTML file for the user.

puppeteer - Puppeteer is a Node library which provides a high-level API to control headless Chrome or Chromium...

DOM to Image - JavaScript library to generate an image from a DOM node using HTML5 canvas.

Selenium - Selenium automates browsers. That's it! What you do with that power is entirely up to you. Primarily, it is for automating web applications for testing purposes, but is certainly not limited to just that.

RasterizeHTML.js - Renders HTML into the browser's canvas.

BrowserCat - Easy, fast, and reliable browser automation and headless browser APIs. The web is messy, but your code shouldn't be.