Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

PageSpeed Insights VS Playwright

Compare PageSpeed Insights VS Playwright and see what are their differences

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PageSpeed Insights logo PageSpeed Insights

PageSpeed is addon for ...

Playwright logo Playwright

Playwright is automation software for Chromium, Firefox, Webkit using the Node.js library having a single API in place.
  • PageSpeed Insights Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-01-02
  • Playwright Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-22

PageSpeed Insights features and specs

  • Comprehensive Analysis
    PageSpeed Insights provides a thorough analysis of both mobile and desktop versions of your website, offering insights into performance, accessibility, best practices, and SEO metrics.
  • Actionable Recommendations
    The tool offers specific, actionable recommendations to improve page load times and overall site performance, making it easier for developers to implement necessary changes.
  • Integration with Other Google Tools
    PageSpeed Insights seamlessly integrates with other Google tools such as Google Analytics and Search Console, providing a more holistic view of your website's performance.
  • User Experience Metrics
    It measures Core Web Vitals, which are essential for understanding user experience metrics like loading time, interactivity, and visual stability.
  • Free to Use
    The tool is completely free, making it accessible for developers, businesses, and individuals without any associated cost.

Possible disadvantages of PageSpeed Insights

  • Limited Historical Data
    PageSpeed Insights doesn't maintain historical data or trends, making it difficult to track progress over time directly within the tool.
  • Lack of Advanced Features
    While it's excellent for basic to intermediate analysis, it lacks some advanced features and customization options found in paid tools like GTmetrix or WebPageTest.
  • Potential for Misinterpretation
    The results and recommendations can sometimes be technical and difficult for non-developers to understand, leading to potential misinterpretation or incorrect implementation.
  • Server Dependency
    The tool's performance score can be influenced by server locations and current network conditions, which may not always provide a consistent assessment.
  • Lag in Updates
    There can be a lag in updates to reflect the most recent changes in web development practices and Google’s own algorithms, meaning the tool might not always offer the latest best practices.

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.

Analysis of PageSpeed Insights

Overall verdict

  • Yes, PageSpeed Insights is considered to be a good and effective tool for assessing and optimizing web page performance.

Why this product is good

  • PageSpeed Insights, provided by Google, is a valuable tool for analyzing the performance of web pages. It offers specific suggestions to improve page load times, which is crucial for both user experience and search engine optimization. It evaluates both mobile and desktop versions of a website and provides actionable insights tailored for each. The tool is also easy to use and integrates easily into the workflow of developers and site owners.

Recommended for

  • Web developers looking to optimize their sites for better performance.
  • SEO specialists who want to ensure that their pages load quickly and efficiently.
  • Site owners eager to improve user experience by understanding how their sites perform on different devices.
  • Anyone interested in identifying and resolving issues that can slow down their web pages.

Analysis of Playwright

Overall verdict

  • Playwright is a strong choice for browser automation and end-to-end testing due to its reliability, cross-browser support, and extensive features designed to improve test effectiveness and developer productivity.

Why this product is good

  • Playwright is considered good because it provides end-to-end testing capabilities across multiple browsers (Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit) with a single API. It supports multiple languages including JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, C#, and Java, making it versatile for different developer preferences. It offers headless and headed execution, robust automation capabilities, and improved speed and reliability over other testing frameworks. Additionally, Playwright's features like auto-wait, tracing, and capturing screenshots/videos of test runs make debugging easier.

Recommended for

  • Developers seeking cross-browser automated testing solutions
  • Teams working with multiple programming languages who require versatile testing tools
  • Projects requiring reliable, end-to-end testing capabilities
  • Organizations looking to integrate testing with CI/CD pipelines
  • Developers needing advanced debugging and tracing tools for tests

PageSpeed Insights videos

The New Google PageSpeed Insights & How To Use It

More videos:

  • Review - Ezoic Site Speed Accelerator Review — 100 Google PageSpeed Insights Scores on Mobile and Desktop?

Playwright videos

Generate tests in VS Code

More videos:

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

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to PageSpeed Insights and Playwright)
Website Monitoring
100 100%
0% 0
Development
0 0%
100% 100
Performance Monitoring
100 100%
0% 0
Automated Testing
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

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

PageSpeed Insights Reviews

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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 should be more popular than PageSpeed Insights. It has been mentiond 282 times since March 2021. 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.

PageSpeed Insights mentions (112)

  • 100+ Must-Have Web Development Resources
    Google PageSpeed Insights: Tests your site and provides optimization suggestions. - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • How to Create an Awesome Landing Page 💻 📱 with Tailwind CSS(Step-by-Step guide)
    Monitoring and Profiling: Use tools like Google's PageSpeed Insights or Web.dev Measure to analyze your page's performance and get actionable recommendations. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Best Resources For Web Developers 💻 [HTML + CSS + JavaScript]
    Google PageSpeed Insights - Analyze the performance of your web pages and get suggestions for improvement. Website: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Being sued for not complying with WCAG 2.1 AA standards
    Try Google's Lighthouse test instead (aka PageSpeed Insights). It's primarily for testing performance but also gives a score for accessibility, with tips and links to articles on how to solve any issues it detects. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Enable text compression using React, Webpack and Apache
    Const CompressionPlugin = require('compression-webpack-plugin');... plugins: [ new CompressionPlugin({ filename: "[path].gz[query]", algorithm: "gzip", test: /\.(js|css)$/i, }),... When I used page insights to check how fast my webpage loads, it looks like my gz files aren't recognized, or at least one of them isn't recognized. Source: about 2 years ago
View more

Playwright mentions (282)

  • Show HN: Quell – AI QA Agent Working Across Linear, Vercel, Jira, Netlify, Figma
    This is pretty cool - the Jira/Linear integration could save a ton of manual work. How do you handle test data setup and teardown? That's usually where these workflows get messy. For alternatives in this space, there's qawolf (https://qawolf.com) for similar automated testing workflows, or I'm actually building bug0 (https://bug0.com) which also does AI-powered test automation, still in beta. For the more... - Source: Hacker News / 19 days ago
  • Data Broken - Opt out of the data broker nightmare with Privotron and Amazon Q Developer
    Privotron is built on a modern Python stack that leverages several powerful libraries for browser automation and configuration management. At its core, the application uses Playwright, a robust browser automation framework that provides cross-browser support and reliable DOM interaction capabilities. The command-line interface is implemented using Click, which enables sophisticated argument parsing and validation... - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • CI/CD guide: store Playwright test results in AWS S3
    In my job, I've encountered a tool called Playwright for this purpose and was greatly impressed by its capabilities. You can program it to do all the things you do manually -- and run them automatically without needing to open a browser. It's no wonder someone took the time to transform such bloatware as a modern browser into something more automation-friendly. Amazing! - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • 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 / about 1 month 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 / about 2 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

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

GTmetrix - GTmetrix is a free tool that analyzes your page's speed performance. Using PageSpeed and YSlow, GTmetrix generates scores for your pages and offers actionable recommendations on how to fix them.

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

Google Lighthouse - Lighthouse is an open-source, automated tool for improving the quality of web pages.

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.

WebPagetest - Run a free website speed test from multiple locations around the globe using real browsers...

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