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Playwright VS Automation Anywhere

Compare Playwright VS Automation Anywhere and see what are their differences

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Playwright logo Playwright

Playwright is automation software for Chromium, Firefox, Webkit using the Node.js library having a single API in place.

Automation Anywhere logo Automation Anywhere

Automation Anywhere Premier Revolutionizing automation software New Version: Supports Windows 8
  • Playwright Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-22
  • Automation Anywhere Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-21

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.

Automation Anywhere features and specs

  • Scalability
    Automation Anywhere provides robust features that can scale with the growth of an organization. Its architecture supports high-volume automation, making it suitable for enterprises of all sizes.
  • User-Friendly Interface
    The platform offers a highly intuitive and user-friendly interface, including visual flowcharts, which make building and deploying bots easier for users with minimal programming skills.
  • Cloud-Native
    Automation Anywhere is cloud-native, allowing for seamless updates, maintenance, and accessibility regardless of geographic location.
  • Extensive Bot Store
    The platform features an extensive bot marketplace where users can purchase pre-built bots for various tasks, significantly speeding up implementation.
  • AI Integration
    The software offers robust AI and ML capabilities, enabling smarter automation processes and enabling bots to handle cognitive tasks beyond simple rule-based operations.
  • Security Features
    Automation Anywhere emphasizes security with features such as role-based access control, data encryption, and secure credential storage, which ensure data integrity and compliance.

Possible disadvantages of Automation Anywhere

  • Cost
    The platform can be relatively expensive, particularly for small to medium-sized enterprises, when compared to some competitors.
  • Complexity for Advanced Use Cases
    While the platform is user-friendly for simple tasks, more advanced automation can require significant technical expertise and experience.
  • Steep Initial Learning Curve
    Despite its user-friendly interface, new users may experience a steep initial learning curve when it comes to understanding full capabilities and best practices.
  • Resource Intensive
    The software can be resource-intensive, requiring significant system resources, which can be a drawback for organizations with limited IT infrastructure.
  • Customer Support
    Some users have reported that customer support can be slow to respond and less helpful than expected for resolving complex issues.
  • Integration Limitations
    Although it integrates with a wide range of applications, some users have reported encountering limitations or difficulties when trying to integrate with less common or highly specialized systems.

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

Analysis of Automation Anywhere

Overall verdict

  • Overall, Automation Anywhere is regarded as a reliable and efficient RPA tool that caters to various industries. It is particularly praised for its ability to improve productivity and accuracy by minimizing manual intervention and human errors in business processes.

Why this product is good

  • Automation Anywhere is considered a good choice for Robotic Process Automation (RPA) due to its user-friendly platform, extensive range of bots for automating repetitive tasks, and strong support for both attended and unattended automation. Its cloud-native architecture allows for scalability and flexibility, while its advanced features such as AI integration, analytics, and a robust bot store provide comprehensive solutions for businesses looking to automate complex processes.

Recommended for

  • Enterprises seeking to enhance operational efficiency through automation
  • Organizations requiring scalable solutions for process automation
  • Businesses interested in leveraging AI and machine learning for advanced process automation
  • IT departments looking for tools to automate routine and repetitive tasks

Playwright videos

Generate tests in VS Code

More videos:

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

Automation Anywhere videos

Blue Prism vs UiPath vs Automation Anywhere | RPA Tools Comparison | Edureka

More videos:

  • Review - Automation Anywhere Review (Real User: Kalyan Bitra)
  • Review - Automation Anywhere Review (Real User: Brian D'Souza)

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Playwright and Automation Anywhere)
Development
100 100%
0% 0
Robotics Process Automation
Automated Testing
100 100%
0% 0
BPM
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 Playwright and Automation Anywhere

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...

Automation Anywhere Reviews

Top 5 Microsoft Power Automate alternatives for 2024
“As Power Automate alternatives go, Automation Anywhere is a strong competitor,” says Travis Lindemoen, managing director of Nexus IT Group. “Granted, the latter is more expensive, but in my opinion, it offers more features and flexibility — Automation Anywhere is the better option for automating anything outside of Microsoft systems.”
Source: www.jotform.com
6 Best Power Automate Alternatives & Competitors in 2024
Automation Anywhere stands out as a leading alternative to Power Automate, particularly for enterprise-level automation needs. This platform is recognized for its user-friendly interface and powerful Intelligent Digital Workforce capabilities. Unlike Power Automate, which caters mainly to Microsoft ecosystem integrations, Automation Anywhere offers a more versatile approach,...

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Playwright seems to be more popular. 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.

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 / 18 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
View more

Automation Anywhere mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Automation Anywhere yet. Tracking of Automation Anywhere recommendations started around Mar 2021.

What are some alternatives?

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

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

Blue Prism - Blue Prism is a leading Artificial Intelligence software that allows businesses to manage and deploy their digital workforce composed of software robots.

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.

Microsoft Power Automate - Microsoft Power Automate is an automation platform that integrates DPA, RPA, and process mining. It lets you automate your organization at scale using low-code and AI.

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

UiPath - UiPath RPA is a high-level platform dedicated to providing seamless automation of data entry on any web form & desktop application.