Hi everyone! I’m currently working on a web scraping project and I need to decide between two popular browser automation tools. I’ve been researching Playwright and Puppeteer but I’m having trouble making a choice.
Both seem to have their own advantages and I want to make sure I pick the right one for my needs. I’ve already ruled out other scraping methods that don’t use actual browsers since the sites I’m targeting rely heavily on JavaScript.
What are your experiences with these tools? Which one would you recommend and why? I’d love to hear about performance differences, ease of use, or any other factors that helped you decide.
Switched from Puppeteer to Playwright eight months ago - best decision ever. The debugging tools alone sold me. Their inspector and trace viewer have saved me tons of time when dynamic content won’t load properly. Uses way less memory too, which is huge when you’re running multiple scrapers at once. Headless mode’s rock solid - no more random crashes during long sessions. What really blew me away was how much better it handles anti-bot stuff compared to Puppeteer. Plus network interception is actually straightforward to set up.
Both tools work fine for scraping, but here’s what nobody’s talking about - managing and scaling scrapers is a pain.
Started with Playwright for one site. Then five sites. Then twenty. Now I’m dealing with deployments, monitoring failures, rate limits, and debugging at 2am.
The real solution isn’t choosing the better library. It’s automating everything so you don’t babysit scrapers all day.
Moved my projects to automation workflows where tool choice matters less. Built-in scheduling, error handling, data processing, and notifications when stuff breaks. Can switch scraping methods without rewriting code.
Playwright vs Puppeteer becomes way less important when automation handles the operational mess. Focus on data, not server maintenance.
Check out Latenode: https://latenode.com
Been using Puppeteer for two years - works great for most scraping jobs. Best part? It’s mature with tons of documentation. Nearly every problem you’ll hit already has a Stack Overflow answer. Performance is solid and handles JS rendering without breaking a sweat. Only downside: it’s Chrome-only. If you need multi-browser support, go with Playwright instead. But for basic Chrome scraping? Puppeteer’s rock-solid and the community’s huge. Easy to pick up if you already know async JavaScript.
depends on what you’re doing. playwright’s better if u need firefox/safari support or hitting sites with weird browser behavior. puppeteer has way more tutorials tho - really helped when i was starting out. performance? pretty much the same for smaller stuff.
both tools r gr8, but honestly, playwrght has my vote. its cross-browser stuff just works way better than puppeteer, especially for js-heavy sites. setup was so easy too!