Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!
Puppeteer vs Selenium: What are the differences?
Introduction:
Puppeteer and Selenium are both popular tools used for automating web browser activities. However, there are key differences between the two that developers should consider when choosing a tool for their automation needs.
Language Support: Puppeteer is a Node.js library that provides a high-level API for controlling headless Chrome or Chromium. This means that developers need to have a good understanding of JavaScript to work with Puppeteer effectively. On the other hand, Selenium supports multiple programming languages like Java, Python, C#, and Ruby, making it a more versatile choice for developers who are proficient in different programming languages.
Performance: Puppeteer is known for its speed and performance as it directly communicates with the Chrome or Chromium browser via the DevTools Protocol. This results in faster execution of automation scripts compared to Selenium, which relies on the WebDriver protocol to communicate with the browser, leading to slightly slower performance.
Headless Mode: Puppeteer has built-in support for running tests in headless mode, which allows for executing browser automation without a visible browser window. In contrast, Selenium requires additional configurations to run tests in headless mode using tools like PhantomJS or headless browsers provided by the browser vendors.
Size and Dependencies: Puppeteer has a smaller footprint compared to Selenium as it is solely focused on Chrome automation. This makes Puppeteer easier to set up and work with as it has fewer dependencies to manage. Selenium, on the other hand, supports multiple browsers and requires the installation of browser drivers for each browser, leading to a larger setup footprint.
Ecosystem and Community Support: Selenium has been in the market for a longer time and has a larger user base and community support compared to Puppeteer. This means that developers working with Selenium can benefit from a more extensive ecosystem of tools, libraries, and resources available for automation testing.
In Summary, Puppeteer is a lightweight and fast tool for browser automation with good performance and headless mode support, whereas Selenium is a more versatile tool with support for multiple programming languages, larger browser compatibility, and a more extensive ecosystem and community support.
we are having one web application developed in Reacts.js. in the application, we have only 4 to 5 pages that we need to test. I am having experience in selenium with java. Please suggets which tool I should use. and why ............................ ............................ .............................
with the help of selenium we can automate react js for functional testing
I am using Node 12 for server scripting and have a function to generate PDF and send it to a browser. Currently, we are using PhantomJS to generate a PDF. Some web post shows that we can achieve PDF generation using Puppeteer. I was a bit confused. Should we move to puppeteerJS? Which one is better with NodeJS for generating PDF?
You better go with puppeteer. It is basically chrome automation tool, written in nodejs. So what you get is PDF, generated by chrome itself. I guess there is hardly better PDF generation tool for the web. Phantomjs is already more or less outdated as technology. It uses some old webkit port that's quite behind in terms of standards and features. It can be replaced with puppeteer for every single task.
I suggest puppeteer to go for. It is simple and easy to set up. Only limitaiton is it can be used only for chrome browser and currently they are looking into expanding into FF. The next thing is Playwright which is just a scale up of Puppeteer. It supports cross browsers.
My company was looking for a testing tool that would integrate easily with AWS Amplify and quickly provide value. I created a POC for each tool we were exploring and showed it to the team (since we all want to contribute to the testing framework). Cypress was by far the easiest to go from nothing to running tests that were finding bugs in our web application.
The only difficulties I had with Cypress were working with iframes and the fact it does not currently handle new tabs. Cypress currently supports Chrome, Edge, Electron (headless) and has Firefox in beta so if IE is something you need to support, you might want to use another tool in conjunction or in place of Cypress.
Cypress is very well documented with a very responsive support team. Recently the Cypress team released the 'Real World App' as a showcase for implementing good tests with best practices.
Pros of Puppeteer
- Very well documented10
- Scriptable web browser10
- Promise based6
Pros of Selenium
- Automates browsers177
- Testing154
- Essential tool for running test automation101
- Record-Playback24
- Remote Control24
- Data crawling8
- Supports end to end testing7
- Easy set up6
- Functional testing6
- The Most flexible monitoring system4
- End to End Testing3
- Easy to integrate with build tools3
- Comparing the performance selenium is faster than jasm2
- Record and playback2
- Compatible with Python2
- Easy to scale2
- Integration Tests2
- Integrated into Selenium-Jupiter framework0
Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions
Cons of Puppeteer
- Chrome only10
Cons of Selenium
- Flaky tests8
- Slow as needs to make browser (even with no gui)4
- Update browser drivers2