The effectiveness of web scraping depends on the tools you use. Among these tools, Puppeteer and Playwright stand out due to their browser automation capabilities. In this article, we will compare these two tools to understand which one is more effective and easier to use.
Puppeteer vs. Playwright
Now we'll take a closer look at the difference between Puppeteer and Playwright. We'll talk about what languages they support, what browsers they support, what convenient features they offer, how fast they work, and what browsers they integrate with. At the end, you will have a complete understanding of the differences between these two libraries. So, let's begin!
Language support
Puppeteer provides support for Node.js. That is, it is optimized for JavaScript and TypeScript. If you are already working with them, then Puppeteer will be a suitable choice. It integrates seamlessly into your workflows, and you can get up to speed quickly. Playwright provides APIs for more languages, including JavaScript, Python, C#, and Java. This attracts more developers to Playwright and increases its audience reach.
Browser Support
Puppeteer works best with Chrome and Chromium-based browsers. Because of this, Puppeteer's uses are quite limited. Although a version of Puppeteer for Firefox has recently been released, it is still being improved and needs serious improvements. For example, if you use Puppeteer for Firefox with parallel operations, you will experience system resource overload. Playwright can do the same thing as Puppeteer, but for more browsers. It is cross-browser compatible and works immediately with Chromium, WebKit and Firefox. You can combine Playwright with Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge or Safari. This is a great tool for checking that web applications work correctly under any conditions.
Ease of use for web scraping
Puppeteer has a built-in auto-sleep feature. This reduces the likelihood of errors caused by the asynchronous loading of web elements. At the same time, Puppeteer uses intelligent selectors that speed up and simplify the search for the necessary elements. Playwright, like Puppeteer, also supports auto-waiting functions. This makes Playwright require shorter scripts. In addition to this, Playwright offers built-in proxy support and advanced debugging capabilities.
Speed
The Puppeteer library is not cross-browser compatible, but it often benefits in speed since commands go directly to the browser. On the other hand, the speed of Puppeteer is affected by the complexity of web pages and your own code. Here's an example of the code for scraping a website using Puppeteer in JavaScript:
const puppeteer = require('puppeteer');
async function main() {
const browser = await puppeteer.launch({ headless: true });
const page = await browser.newPage();
await page.goto('https://example.com');
const content = await page.content();
console.log(content);
await browser.close();
}
main();
In this code snippet, the puppeteer library adds integration with Puppeteer functionality to your script. Next in the code, through the asynchronous main function, the offline browser is launched, and a new page opens. After this, there is a transition to https://example.com . The contents of the pages are then retrieved from them and transferred to the console. After this, you close the browser to free up system resources.
Playwright has a speed advantage. For example, in real-world end-to-end (E2E) testing scenarios, Playwright reduces test suite execution time and speeds up monitoring verification. Additionally, Playwright supports cross-browser testing. Here's an example of the code for scraping a website using Playwright in JavaScript:
const { chromium } = require('playwright');
async function main() {
const browser = await chromium.launch({ headless: true });
const context = await browser.newContext();
const page = await context.newPage();
await page.goto('https://example.com');
const content = await page.content();
console.log(content);
await browser.close();
}
main();
The first step is to add a chromium object from the playwright library to integrate Chromium functionality into your script. The following steps repeat those of the previous example. In the code, through the asynchronous main function, the offline browser is launched and a new page is opened. After this, there is a transition to https://example.com. The contents of the pages are then retrieved from them and transferred to the console.
After this, you close the browser to free up system resources. To complete the script, you must call the main function. It will start the task.
Automatic standby mechanism
Both Puppeteer and Playwright support the auto-standby feature, but there are differences in how they work. Puppeteer is best for you if you use JavaScript and Chrome and need to solve a simple web page scraping task. Playwright simplifies the handling of asynchronous events, making it suitable for complex tasks and rendering heavy web pages. However, let's look a little more closely:
- In Playwright's case, auto-waiting is used to perform a series of sanity checks before performing an action (such as a mouse click). If any of the checks do not complete within the specified timeout, the action fails with a TimeoutError.
- In the case of Puppeteer, it offers not only automatic waiting, but also the ability to pause the script until certain conditions are met. For example, the script will not be executed until the web page has fully loaded. To do this, special wait methods are used:
page.waitForNavigation(),page.waitForSelector()andpage.waitForFunction().
Selector Engine
Playwright's selector engine allows you to register custom selector engines. They are optimized for specific tasks. For example, querying tag names or setting custom attributes. Puppeteer's selector engine is also effective, but limited in customization. Unlike Playwright, Puppeteer cannot provide more granular control over element selection or an additional layer of customization for complex web page scraping scripts. In other words, Puppeteer is suitable for simple tasks and simple parsing scenarios, while Playwright is suitable for highly specialized needs.
Integration with other tools
Puppeteer is limited to Chromium browsers and, apart from them, only integrates with Jest and Lighthouse. If you need integration with proxy services, you will have to use additional extensions and plugins. Playwright is cross-browser compatible, meaning it integrates directly with Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Safari, WebKit and Firefox. However, Playwright has built-in proxy server support.
Conclusion
Puppeteer and Playwright equally seamlessly integrate with Bright Data Scraping Browser, a platform for improving web scraping efficiency through built-in website access features. Therefore, the choice between Puppeteer and Playwright depends solely on the complexity of the tasks and your needs.