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Jest vs Playwright comparison of testing frameworks
What are the differences between Jest and Playwright?

Jest

https://jestjs.io

Playwright

https://playwright.dev
Programming language

JavaScript

JavaScript

Category

Unit Testing

End-to-End Testing

General info

A Unit Testing framework focused on simplicity

This is a Unit test framwork especially designed for the React.JS, Babel, TypeScript, Node, React, Angular and Vue projects. It usually worked with Enzyme(Integration testing)

Test across all modern browsers. Use in your preferred language.

Single API to automate Chromium, Firefox and WebKit. Use the Playwright API in JavaScript & TypeScript, Python, .NET and, Java.
xUnit
Set of frameworks originating from SUnit (Smalltalk's testing framework). They share similar structure and functionality.

No

Yes

While using xUnit is supported, it does not support running parallel tests. https://playwright.dev/dotnet/docs/test-runners/#xunit-support
Client-side
Allows testing code execution on the client, such as a web browser

Yes

You can easily test methods, properties, UI element actions and other front-end functionalities

Yes

Test on Chromium, Firefox and WebKit. Playwright has full API coverage for all modern browsers, including Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge (with Chromium), Apple Safari (with WebKit) and Mozilla Firefox. Cross-platform WebKit testing. With Playwright, test how your app behaves in Apple Safari with WebKit builds for Windows, Linux and macOS. Test locally and on CI. Test for mobile. Use device emulation to test your responsive web apps in mobile web browsers. Headless and headed. Playwright supports headless (without browser UI) and headed (with browser UI) modes for all browsers and all platforms. Headed is great for debugging, and headless is faster and suited for CI/cloud executions.
Server-side
Allows testing the bahovior of a server-side code

Yes

Back-end server behaviour also can be tested with Jest much in the same way as the front-end tests.

Yes

While running tests inside browsers you may want to make calls to the HTTP API of your application. It may be helpful if you need to prepare server state before running a test or to check some postconditions on the server after performing some actions in the browser. All of that could be achieved via APIRequestContext methods.
Fixtures
Allows defining a fixed, specific states of data (fixtures) that are test-local. This ensures specific environment for a single test

Yes

Fixtures are supported, Jest has many helper functions such as: BeforeEach and afterEach If you have some work you need to do repeatedly for many tests, beforeAll and afterAll if you only need to do setup once, at the beginning of a file.

Yes

Playwright Test is based on the concept of the test fixtures. Test fixtures are used to establish environment for each test, giving the test everything it needs and nothing else. Test fixtures are isolated between tests, which gives Playwright Test following benefits: Playwright Test runs tests in parallel by default, making your test suite much faster; Playwright Test can efficiently retry the flaky failures, instead of re-running the whole suite; You can group tests based on their meaning, instead of their common setup. Learn more at https://playwright.dev/docs/test-fixtures
Group fixtures
Allows defining a fixed, specific states of data for a group of tests (group-fixtures). This ensures specific environment for a given group of tests.

Yes

Jest supports group fixtures

Yes

You can group tests based on their meaning, instead of their common setup.
Generators
Supports data generators for tests. Data generators generate input data for test. The test is then run for each input data produced in this way.

N/A

Yes

Playwright comes with the ability to generate tests out of the box. Generate tests; Preserve authenticated state; Record using custom setup; Emulate devices; Emulate color scheme and viewport size; Emulate geolocation, language and timezone. Learn more at https://playwright.dev/docs/codegen/
Licence
Licence type governing the use and redistribution of the software

MIT License

Apache License 2.0

Mocks
Mocks are objects that simulate the behavior of real objects. Using mocks allows testing some part of the code in isolation (with other parts mocked when needed)

Jest uses a custom resolver for imports in your tests making it simple to mock any object outside of your test’s scope. You can use mocked imports with the rich Mock Functions API to spy on function calls with readable test syntax.

Yes

Playwright introduces context-wide network interception to stub and mock network requests. You can mock API endpoints via handling the network quests in your Playwright script. Learn more at https://playwright.dev/docs/network/#handle-requests
Grouping
Allows organizing tests in groups

Yes

You can declare as many test suites as you want. Grouping of tests together is done using a describe block

Yes

You can group tests to give them a logical name or to scope before/after hooks to the group.
Other
Other useful information about the testing framework

You can use the Playwright API in JavaScript & TypeScript, Python, .NET and, Java.