Playwright vs go test/testing comparison of testing frameworks
What are the differences between Playwright and go test/testing?

	Playwright https://playwright.dev	go test/testing https://golang.org/pkg/testing/
Programming language	JavaScript	Go
Category	End-to-End Testing	Unit Testing
General info	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.	go test is an inbuilt tool/command for conducting automated tests in Golang while testing is the inbuilt testing library Testing is the package that is shipped with go and combines with the go test command to provide a minimal but complete testing experience
xUnit Set of frameworks originating from SUnit (Smalltalk's testing framework). They share similar structure and functionality.	Yes While using xUnit is supported, it does not support running parallel tests. https://playwright.dev/dotnet/docs/test-runners/#xunit-support	No However there are Plugins such as https://github.com/tebeka/go2xunitto convert the output of Go testing library into xUnit format
Client-side Allows testing code execution on the client, such as a web browser	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.	Yes Yes it can be used effectively for front-end testing
Server-side Allows testing the bahovior of a server-side code	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.	Yes Yes, it is used by developers for end-to-end testing so the back-end can be tested easily as well
Fixtures Allows defining a fixed, specific states of data (fixtures) that are test-local. This ensures specific environment for a single test	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	Yes Yes it's straightforward in that first when you run 'go test' for packages in the scope the test will be executed with its working directory set to the source directory of the package being tested. Second the 'go test' tool will ignore any directory in your $GOPATH that starts with the word 'testdata' , starts with a period or an underscore
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 You can group tests based on their meaning, instead of their common setup.	Yes Group fixtures can be done following a similar procedure as a single fixture
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.	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/	Yes They are available by importing a package called 'gotests' (https://github.com/cweill/gotests)
Licence Licence type governing the use and redistribution of the software	Apache License 2.0	MIT License
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)	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	Yes By use of a third party library GoMock which intergrates well with the testing library
Grouping Allows organizing tests in groups	Yes You can group tests to give them a logical name or to scope before/after hooks to the group.	Yes The short answer is yes, by use of table tests which are a great way of performing multiple I/O tests on a function or behaviour with minimal code
Other Other useful information about the testing framework	You can use the Playwright API in JavaScript & TypeScript, Python, .NET and, Java.