Cypress vs Playwright

Q: How do I migrate from Playwright to Cypress?

Follow the Playwright to Cypress migration guide . It maps common Playwright APIs, such as locators, assertions, and network routing, to their Cypress equivalents, so you can move one spec at a time and run both frameworks side by side while you migrate.

Compare Cypress and Playwright: debugging, flake analytics, accessibility, AI agent tooling, and CI orchestration, plus a guide to migrate.

Last updated Tuesday, Oct 6, 2026

Install Cypress View migration guide

Authentication.cy.ts

Button.tsx

Button.cy.tsx

design-system
- assets
- cypress
  - e2e
    - Authentication.cy.ts
- src
  - components
    - Button.cy.tsx
    - Button.tsx

describe('Auth', () => {
  it('user should be able to log in', () => {
    cy.visit('/')

    // open the login modal
    cy.get('button').contains('Login').click()

    // fill in the form
    cy.get('input[type="email"]').type('[email protected]')
    cy.get('input[type="password"]').type('test123')

    // submit the form // @cy-startTyping
    cy.get('button').contains('Sign in').click()
    cy.contains('button', 'Logout').should('be.visible')
  })
})

describe('Auth', () => {
  it('user should be able to log in', () => {
    cy.visit('/')

    // open the login modal
    cy.get('button').contains('Login').click()

    // fill in the form
    cy.get('input[type="email"]').type('[email protected]')
    cy.get('input[type="password"]').type('test123')

    // submit the form

Introducing Cypress

Ship web apps your team can trust, from first test to release

Write tests in the open-source Cypress App, debug CI failures with Test Replay, and see quality across every run in Cypress Cloud, with AI tooling at each step.

Extend your testing with Cypress Cloud

Playwright is a capable framework, but run history, analytics, accessibility, and test coverage live in separate tools you have to add and maintain. Cypress brings the framework and Cypress Cloud together in one platform, so your team spends less time on tooling and more time shipping.

Debugging superpowers

Time Travel and Test Replay show exactly what happened at every step of a test, locally and in CI. Test Replay records the DOM, network, and console of every run and opens from a link. Playwright traces capture similar detail, but each one is a file to store as a CI artifact and download before anyone can look.

Your AI coding agent gets the same view through Cloud MCP and Cloud CLI, then confirms its fix with cypress tap.

Put your AI coding agent to work on your tests

Cypress skills teach your agent to write and debug tests the Cypress way. cypress tap lets it run a spec and fix its own work. Cloud MCP and Cloud CLI give it the history of every recorded run, so it can tell what is new, known, or noise.

Playwright's Test Agents and MCP server drive a browser, but neither knows how your tests behave across CI runs. See Cypress AI.

New

Files

Automations

Today

This week

Migrating login.spec.ts from Playwright with thecypress-author skill, then verifying it.

$ cypress tap run login.cy.ts✗ signs in · expected [data-cy=welcome] to be visible▸ DOM at assertion · redirect to /dashboard pendingwaiting for the dashboard route before asserting …✓ re-run · 3 of 3 passed

Passing locally. Checking Cypress Cloud for how this flow behaves in CI.

▸ Cloud MCP · login flow · last 20 runsauth.cy.ts › session expiry · flaky in 3 runs

Migration verified. Committing, and flagging the flaky session-expiry test for you to review.

Flaky test management

Cypress Cloud detects flaky tests automatically and tracks them across runs with Flaky Test Analytics, so you can fix the root cause. Playwright flags a test as flaky only within a single run's report; spotting the ones that keep flaking is up to you.

Integrate seamlessly into your workflow

Cypress Cloud posts PR Comments and Status Checks to GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket, and connects to Slack, MS Teams, and Jira. Webhooks send run events to your own endpoints to update a dashboard, open a ticket, or gate a deployment. With Playwright, that glue lives in your own CI scripts.

Enterprise capabilities

Roll Cypress out across your organization with SSO, role-based access, and project permissions. Enterprise Reporting tracks quality trends across every project. Playwright has no built-in equivalent, so teams assemble their own.

Accessibility reporting

Cypress Accessibility checks every page your tests visit, with no setup, and reports violations with fixes. The checks run in Cypress Cloud after your tests finish, so they never slow a run down. Playwright offers accessibility assertions and an axe-core integration, but each check runs inside the test where you add it, adding time to every run, and there is no report across your app to track over time.

UI Coverage visualization

You cannot protect what you cannot see. UI Coverage shows which parts of your app your tests reach and which they miss, so you can close gaps before they reach production. Playwright has no equivalent.

Premium support and guidance

Playwright has no paid support plan. Cypress offers both: a Discord community of over 14,000 testers, and hands-on support from the Cypress team on Cypress Cloud plans.

Feature Comparison

Why choose Cypress over Playwright?

Feature	Cypress	Playwright
Test Retries	Supported	Supported
Component Testing	Supported	Supported
Branch Review	Supported	Not supported
Flaky Test Analytics	Supported	Not supported
Load Balancing by historical spec duration	Supported	Not supported
Spec Prioritization for previously failed specs	Supported	Not supported
Auto Cancellation across CI machines	Supported	Not supported
Natural-language test steps with cy.prompt	Supported	Not supported
Project Analytics	Supported	Not supported
Filter recorded runs by group and tag	Supported	Not supported
Org and project management	Supported	Not supported
Enterprise Reporting	Supported	Not supported
Cloud MCP for CI test results	Supported	Not supported
Cloud CLI for CI runs and Test Replay	Supported	Not supported
Webhooks for run events	Supported	Not supported
UI Coverage reports	Supported	Not supported
Accessibility reports	Supported	Not supported
PR Comments	Supported	Not supported
Status Checks	Supported	Not supported
Team Notifications	Supported	Not supported

Frequently asked questions

Is Cypress free?

Cypress is a free, downloadable and open source (MIT license) application. This is always free to use.

Cypress Cloud is a web application which records your test runs in CI to help you scale every facet of testing. Every team can start on the free Starter plan, and paid plans add more test results and premium features. See our pricing page for details.

What is Cypress Cloud? How does it extend the value of Cypress App?

On most teams, merging your code up beyond your local environment means executing automated tests in a CI pipeline.

Cypress Cloud is a service that unlocks the full potential of Cypress test automation tools in your CI pipeline. Cloud takes the rich result data coming from tests run in the Cypress App and provides developers with a variety of tools for scaling every facet of Cypress testing:

Smart Orchestration tools to increase speed and conserve resources in your CI runs
Test Replay to debug CI failures exactly as they ran
Integrations with popular version control tools like GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket
Cloud MCP, which gives your AI coding agent direct access to your test results
Increased visibility into test flake and failure
Analytics for measuring and optimizing your entire test suite
Specialized products like Cypress Accessibility and UI Coverage, which extend the value of your tests. These help ensure comprehensive coverage of accessibility standards and user interface elements.

How does Cypress work with AI coding agents?

Cypress gives your AI coding agent, such as Claude Code, Cursor, or GitHub Copilot, the same context your team uses:

Cypress skills teach your agent to write, explain, and debug tests following Cypress best practices, and to answer questions from the official docs.
cypress tap lets your agent run a spec in a live Cypress session, read the failure as the Command Log shows it, and inspect the DOM at the moment a command ran.
Cloud MCP connects your agent to Cypress Cloud results, including flake history and accessibility reports.
Cloud CLI queries runs, test results, and Test Replay data from the terminal, for developers and agents alike.

See Cypress AI for the full picture.

How do I migrate from Playwright to Cypress?

Follow the Playwright to Cypress migration guide. It maps common Playwright APIs, such as locators, assertions, and network routing, to their Cypress equivalents, so you can move one spec at a time and run both frameworks side by side while you migrate.

Ready to make the switch?

Here are some resources to help you get started: