Playwright vs Puppeteer: licensing, GitHub activity, and what each is actually for. Neutral comparison, no paid rankings.
Playwright: Open source. 97,617 GitHub stars. Microsoft's gold-standard E2E framework. Single API across Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit. Auto-waits, trace viewer, and the best codegen in the business. Most recommended framework in 2026.
Puppeteer: Open source. 95,683 GitHub stars. Google's official headless Chrome Node.js API for browser automation. Full Chrome DevTools Protocol access for advanced scenarios.