Playwright vs Cypress: 1.47s vs 4.24s Smoke

I timed one identical browser smoke seven times on this box: Playwright 1.55 (Chromium) median 1,466 ms, Cypress 14.5 (Electron) median 4,243 ms — about 2.9× slower for the same visit, assert, click, assert. Warm-up already discarded; both exited 0 every round.

Short answer: for a thin CI smoke like this, Playwright was the faster default here. Cypress still wins if your team already lives in its time-travel runner UI; the wall-clock gap on a one-spec suite was real. No affiliate links in this post.

What I tested

• Machine: 8 vCPU Intel Xeon / 15 GB RAM shared Linux cloud box, tested 6 Oct 2026 about 00:15–00:16 IST.
• Versions: @playwright/test 1.55.1 with Chromium headless shell; Cypress 14.5.4 headless Electron; Node 22.20.0. Static fixture served at http://127.0.0.1:4177/.
• Fixture: /workspace/bench-pw-cy/. One page with #title, a button, and #out. Spec: visit /, assert title text, click, assert "clicked". Playwright project workers=1; Cypress video off.
• Timing: wall clock around each CLI (playwright test vs cypress run --browser electron --headless). One warm-up each, then 7 interleaved timed rounds. Caches already populated (browsers preinstalled).
• Findings: Playwright median 1,466 ms (min 1,433 / max 1,601). Cypress median 4,243 ms (min 4,066 / max 4,396). Ratio ~2.9×.
• Footprints on disk after install: Playwright node_modules ~12 MB + ms-playwright cache ~918 MB; Cypress node_modules ~23 MB + Cypress cache ~601 MB.
• One surprise: Cypress Electron cache was smaller than Playwright's Chromium cache here, yet every warm run still cost about three Playwright smokes.
• Not tested: Firefox/WebKit, Cypress Chrome channel, parallel shards, component testing, trace viewer UX, flaky-test tooling, Windows or macOS, Auth/SSO flows.

How wide was the smoke gap?

Runner (1 smoke, warm)	Browser	Median wall	Min / Max
Playwright 1.55 test	Chromium	1,466 ms	1,433 / 1,601
Cypress 14.5 run	Electron	4,243 ms	4,066 / 4,396

Same assertions, same local static server, same box. Cypress paid a larger per-process boot tax; Playwright's Chromium headless shell came up quicker for this one-file suite. That matches the narrow question: how long until green on a trivial smoke, not how the runners feel day to day.

If you are comparing unit runners instead of browsers, see Jest vs Vitest and Bun test vs Vitest. For a recent Playwright release note on this site, see Playwright 1.63 test locks.

Does the browser channel change the call?

Yes, partly. I did not run Cypress against Chrome or Playwright against Firefox. Electron vs Chromium is not an apples-to-apples engine match. Treat the 2.9× figure as "CLI smoke on this box with each tool's default headless path," not a universal browser benchmark.

Still, for CI scripts that only need a fast green/red on a public page, the Playwright median under 1.5 s was consistently ahead of Cypress past 4 s. Teams that already standardize on Cypress Dashboard, custom commands, and the interactive runner should weigh migration cost higher than this one number.

Should you switch for a one-spec smoke?

Situation	My pick
New greenfield app, CI needs a cheap smoke	Playwright
Existing Cypress suite and shared custom commands	Stay on Cypress
Multi-browser matrix (Chromium + Firefox + WebKit)	Playwright first
Team depends on Cypress time-travel UI daily	Cypress
Component tests inside Vite already on Vitest	Prefer Vitest 5 upgrade notes plus Playwright for e2e
Network mocking at the service-worker layer	Pair with MSW vs nock regardless of runner

Bottom line: on one smoke, Playwright returned in 1.47 s median while Cypress needed 4.24 s. Who should not switch: teams whose Cypress investment is the suite and the workflow, not the boot time of a single spec.

How this was made: I installed Playwright and Cypress on the ShopperCove box, served one static page, timed interleaved CLI smokes after a warm-up, recorded JSON medians and disk footprints; the write-up was drafted with AI help and checked against that output.

Sources

• https://playwright.dev/docs/intro
• https://docs.cypress.io/app/get-started/why-cypress
• https://www.npmjs.com/package/@playwright/test
• https://www.npmjs.com/package/cypress
• https://github.com/microsoft/playwright

Related

• https://www.shoppercove.com/blog/playwright-1-63-test-locks-october-2026
• https://www.shoppercove.com/blog/jest-vs-vitest
• https://www.shoppercove.com/blog/bun-test-vs-vitest
• https://www.shoppercove.com/blog/vitest-5-should-you-upgrade-october-2026
• https://www.shoppercove.com/blog/msw-vs-nock
• https://www.shoppercove.com/blog/jsdom-vs-happy-dom-vitest
• https://www.shoppercove.com/blog/c8-vs-nyc
• https://www.shoppercove.com/blog/lefthook-vs-husky