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

	WebdriverIO https://webdriver.io/	Playwright https://playwright.dev
Programming language	JavaScript	JavaScript
Category	Browser Automation, Unit Testing, Functional Testing	End-to-End Testing
General info	WebdriverIO is the next-gen WebDriver test framework for Node.js made upon Selenium WebdriverIO is written in JavaScript and uses Selenium under the hood. It also comes with its own inbuilt test runner and supports other testing frameworks like Jasmine, Cucumber, and Mocha	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.	Yes	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 WebdriverIO allows the use of advanced CSS selectors and makes it easy to find elements for front-end testing	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 It can be used to test server side behaviour and functionality	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 WebdriverIO supports the creation of fixtures	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 WebdriverIO supports the creation of 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)	Yes It contains a mocking service called 'wdio-wiremock-service'	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 WebdriverIO allows one to build test suites, you can run these test in parallel and organize them by adjusting the 'maxInstances' property in your config file	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.