Cypress vs Playwright vs Selenium — 2026 Decision Matrix

Last updated 2026-07-20 · 12 min read · By Avinash Kamble, reviewed by Priyanka G.

Framework comparison posts are usually vendor bingo. This one is different — it is built from 4 real migrations we tracked over 2024-2026, including one team that moved from Cypress to Playwright and one that moved off Playwright back to Selenium 4. Numbers, not opinions.

Key takeaways

• The 12 decision criteria that actually matter.
• Real flake rates, CI costs, and time-to-green.
• When Selenium 4 still wins in 2026.
• The migration decision tree.

• Cypress — small SPA teams, JS/TS shop, component-first, willing to pay for Dashboard parallelism.
• Playwright — greenfield, cross-browser required, cost-sensitive CI, polyglot team.
• Selenium 4 — enterprise multi-language shops, real Safari / IE mode, existing grid infra, huge hiring pool.

Answer these in order: (1) Do you need real Safari or IE? → Selenium. (2) Is your team JS-only and building components? → Cypress. (3) Everything else → Playwright. That is not a joke — it is the outcome of 4 migration calls.

Cypress → Playwright: ~2 weeks per 100 tests (selectors translate 1:1 in most cases). Selenium → Playwright: ~3 weeks per 100 tests (waits and fixtures need rewrite). See our Playwright locators guide, Selenium locators cheat sheet, and fixtures deep dive for the concrete translation patterns.