selenium vs cypress vs playwright on Hacker News

Across 2007–2026 of Hacker News, selenium leads selenium vs cypress vs playwright with 6,060 mentions to playwright’s 3,633, peaking in Feb 2020.

Mention-over-time for selenium vs cypress vs playwright, overlaid across 2007–2026 of Hacker News. Each line is a live date-histogram over ~45M posts and comments, computed with Upstash Redis Search.

selenium6,060 mentions, peak Feb 2020cypress2,253 mentions, peak Dec 2020playwright3,633 mentions, peak Feb 2026

Open this comparison in the interactive tool — zoom to any date range and read the stories behind each spike →

How the lead changed hands

Browser test automation, three generations: Selenium is the way to drive a browser through the 2010s, Cypress reinvents it for the modern front-end ~2020, then Playwright pulls ahead and surges into 2025–26.

The stories behind each line

Top “selenium” stories

DeleteFB: Selenium script to delete all of your Facebook wall posts 1,067 points · 2019
Show HN: Skyvern – Browser automation using LLMs and computer vision 422 points · 2024
Ask HN: What automation tools have you used to replace mundane activities? 408 points · 2020
Web automation: Don't use Selenium, use Playwright 408 points · 2022

Top “cypress” stories

Cypress: Fast, easy, and reliable testing for anything that runs in a browser 316 points · 2020
Show HN: Visual debugger for Rails system tests 131 points · 2024
Testing React Apps in 2022 with Cypress: An In-Depth Guide for Beginners 82 points · 2022
Help HN: Laid off due to Covid, almost out of runway 75 points · 2020

Top “playwright” stories

Tracking supermarket prices with Playwright 467 points · 2024
Web automation: Don't use Selenium, use Playwright 408 points · 2022
Playwright: Automate Chromium, WebKit and Firefox 383 points · 2022
Show HN: Stagehand – an open source browser automation framework powered by AI 326 points · 2025

Each term on its own

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