Playwright is an open-source framework for web testing and browser automation, made by Microsoft. Browser automation means a program, not a person, opens web pages, clicks, types and reads the results. One API drives the three main browser engines, Chromium, Firefox and WebKit, on Linux, macOS and Windows, either headless (without a visible window) or headed, from TypeScript, Python, .NET or Java.
Playwright Test is a test runner for end-to-end tests, which check a whole application through its user interface. It waits for elements to be ready before acting, retries assertions, gives each test a fresh browser context, runs tests in parallel, and records traces with DOM snapshots, network requests and screenshots. Used as a library, Playwright runs scripts for web scraping, PDF generation and screenshot capture. For AI agents, Playwright MCP is a Model Context Protocol server that lets an agent control a browser through structured accessibility snapshots of the page, and Playwright CLI offers the same control to coding agents through shell commands. A code generator records clicks in the browser and writes the test code.
Playwright is free and open source under the Apache-2.0 license.