Why Leaders Are Migrating from Selenium to Playwright

In the early 2000s, Blockbuster was booming. It defined the way people watched movies. Stores everywhere. Millions of customers. Then came Netflix. Faster, easier, built for how people wanted to watch films in a new era. Blockbuster resisted change, stuck to its old model, and was gone within a decade.

Selenium is today’s Blockbuster. It ruled a generation of test automation and built its reputation. But the software world has changed, and companies are banking on Playwright for a faster and simpler way to test software. 

If you want to migrate to Playwright, you’re at the right place. 

In this article, we’ll break down:

• Why teams are choosing Playwright over other automation tools.
• What the ideal migration approach looks like.
• What things should leaders consider before migration

Also, we’ll share the exact strategy with you that we have executed for our clients, and how it can reduce the migration time from months to weeks using AI. 

So let’s begin. 

Selenium’s Story

For nearly two decades, Selenium was the gold standard in web test automation. When it arrived in the mid-2000s, it was transformative. The web was simpler then: server-rendered pages, long release cycles, and fewer moving parts. 

Selenium gave teams a way to automate repetitive tests, reduce manual QA, and ship software more confidently. In that era, it was the foundation of how QA was done.

• The Rise: Selenium democratized access to automated testing. Companies across industries, from finance to retail to SaaS, built their QA pipelines around it. Entire consulting practices and QA careers grew on Selenium’s tech. For years, it was associated with web automation itself.
• The Fall: But the web evolved. Static pages gave way to single-page apps. Release cycles accelerated from months to weeks, then days, and now with the AI coding hours. Mobile-first design and microservices architectures changed how software behaves. Selenium, built for an earlier era, couldn’t keep up. What once felt like a reliable engine started to feel like outdated technology.

Meanwhile, Playwright emerged, built for the modern stack. Where Selenium introduced waiting and flakiness, Playwright brought auto-waiting and reliability. 

You can explore more in detail in our guide on key Playwright features.

Where Selenium needed heavy infrastructure, Playwright ran fast and light in CI/CD. Where Selenium slowed regressions to hours, Playwright cut them down to minutes.

• The Timeline
  • 2004–2015: Selenium dominates as the go-to framework. Entire industries build on it.
  • 2015–2020: The flaws appear. SPAs, CI/CD, and mobile testing stretch Selenium’s limits.
  • 2020–Today: Playwright gains adoption, backed by Microsoft, used by enterprises, and scaled by the open-source community.
  • 2025: Playwright surpasses Selenium in usage among QA professionals.

And yet, despite clear advantages, many teams are stuck with Selenium. In the next section, we’ll dig into why teams resist migration and how you should plan it.

Why Teams Still Use Selenium

If Playwright solves so many of the problems Selenium created, why haven’t all companies switched already? The short answer: migrations are rarely just technical. They’re human, political, and organizational. Leaders know the destination is clear, but the path is messy. Understanding these forces explains why Selenium still has a hold

1. Sunk Cost and Emotional Attachment: Entire QA ecosystems have been built on Selenium, frameworks, utilities, and custom libraries that took years to craft. Teams are proud of that work. For many engineers, those frameworks represent not just code but career capital. Asking them to walk away can feel like asking a craftsman to abandon their tools.
2. Dual Burden During Transition: Migration isn’t a light switch. For months, teams must maintain Selenium while standing up Playwright. That means:
   • Double expertise (teams need skills in both frameworks).
   • Double infrastructure (Selenium grids still running while Playwright pipelines come online).
   • Double test coverage (to avoid regressions, tests are often run in parallel for a period).
     For organizations under constant delivery pressure, this dual burden feels stressing.
3. Organizational Momentum and Risk Aversion: Large companies thrive on predictability. Even if Selenium slows them down, it’s familiar. Leaders worry:
   • What if migration delays a critical release?
   • What if test coverage dips mid-transition?
   • What if we retrain everyone and lose speed?
     In industries like finance, healthcare, or aerospace, where compliance and safety matter, risk aversion is understandable. The only challenge comes from clinging to Selenium that creates the same risks they fear, just in slow motion.
4. Skills, Training, and Culture: Selenium’s ecosystem has been around for nearly two decades. Entire QA teams were hired and trained around Java + Selenium. Moving to Playwright often means embracing JavaScript or TypeScript, a language shift not every QA engineer welcomes. Upskilling takes time, and leaders worry about productivity dips during the learning curve.
5. Lack of Awareness at the Executive Level: Not every leader tracks testing frameworks. To many, Selenium is still “the standard.” If their teams aren’t vocal or if metrics aren’t visible, leaders may not realize how much time is being lost to flaky tests, reruns, and slow regressions. Migration doesn’t happen until pain becomes impossible to ignore.

Why Moving Still Makes Sense

Despite these barriers, migration is happening. Enterprises like Adobe, ING Bank, and NASA have already switched. The reality is that staying on Selenium carries hidden costs, like longer cycles, higher maintenance, and degrading trust. Those costs compound every quarter.

Migration is about changing how testing fits into the software delivery pipeline, from obstacle to enabler.

This is where many organizations get stuck. They know Selenium is slowing them down, but they can’t see a clear, low-risk path to Playwright.

That’s exactly where a structured approach, like the one we’ve developed at ThinkSys, matters. We’ll walk through what a strategic migration plan looks like and how to execute it in a way that balances speed, safety, and ROI.

If you’re still unsure whether migrating is the right move, don’t worry. We’ve put together a detailed Playwright vs Selenium vs Cypress comparison that will help you see the differences clearly and make a confident decision

Challenges of Migrating to Playwright

For CEOs and CTOs, the real decision point is balancing benefits with risks. Here are the core challenges that leaders must evaluate before making the leap.

1. Technical and Operational Challenges

These are the key issues teams face during migration.

• Dual framework overhead: For months, Selenium and Playwright often run side by side. This means duplicated tests, duplicated maintenance, and duplicated infrastructure. For a mid- to large-sized org, that’s added cost and complexity.
• Rewriting outdated cases: Many Selenium tests were written for older UIs or workflows. Migrating them isn’t a one-to-one copy; it takes time and careful validation.
• Pipeline reconfiguration: Moving from Selenium/Java to Playwright/TypeScript (or Python/.NET) means adjusting CI/CD pipelines, build tools, and environments. For leaders, this raises concerns about release delays during retooling.
• Complex scenarios: AI tools can convert simple tests, but multi-tab, async-heavy, or domain-specific flows often need manual rewriting. That slows the pace of migration.

A key challenge in migration is keeping tests stable across browsers. Playwright makes this easier with built-in support for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge

As we explain in our guide on cross-browser testing with Playwright.

2. Human and Organizational Challenges

The people's side of migration is just as critical as the tech.

• Skills gap: Selenium teams often come from a Java-heavy background. Playwright works with JavaScript/TypeScript. Leaders worry about retraining speed and productivity dips.
• Change resistance: Engineers are emotionally invested in the Selenium frameworks they’ve built and perfected. They may resist letting go, even when it makes strategic sense.
• Cultural issues: In many orgs, testing has been treated as “QA’s job.” Playwright encourages developer ownership, which requires a cultural shift. Leaders must manage that change.
• Team fatigue: Migration can feel like “extra work” on top of delivery. If not resourced well, burnout or missed deadlines become real risks.

3. Strategic and Business Risks

Finally, the higher-level risks that keep executives up at night.

• Release disruption: Migration takes time. Leaders fear coverage gaps or unstable tests during transition that might allow bugs into production.
• Opportunity cost: Every hour spent migrating is an hour not spent building features. Leaders worry about whether the investment pays off quickly enough.
• Longevity and ecosystem: Even though Playwright is backed by Microsoft, some leaders ask: What if it doesn’t work? Betting on the wrong tool has real business costs.
• Regulated environments: In industries like finance or healthcare, test coverage and auditability are non-negotiable. Leaders need guarantees that migration won’t break compliance.

These challenges are the reasons that force any leader to emphasize a migration plan first. That’s why in the next section, we’ll discuss how to structure a migration plan that makes progress visible, contains risk, and avoids disruption. 

Migration Strategy to Move from Selenium to Playwright

Migrating from Selenium to Playwright is less about swapping tools and more about upgrading an entire layer of your engineering culture. For leaders, the key questions are simple: How long will it take? How much will it cost? What risks might surface, and how do we contain them? A good migration strategy answers all three.

1. Time and Effort: The timeline depends on test suite size, complexity, and team structure. From industry standards and leader perspectives, here’s what’s typical:
   • Mid-size suites (200–500 tests): ~3–6 months
   • Large suites (1,000+ tests): ~6–12+ months
     Factors that influence pace:
   • Team structure: Dedicated migration teams move faster than shared, part-time ownership.
   • Language parity: Java to TypeScript is slower than Python to Python.
   • Test complexity: CRUD flows are quick; multi-tab, async-heavy workflows take longer.
2. Money: Migration costs are a mix of engineering time and infrastructure changes.
   • People costs:
     • Retraining QA engineers on Playwright + TypeScript (or chosen language).
     • Allocating 2–3 full-time engineers for dedicated migration teams (faster, more consistent).
     • Skilling developers to contribute tests directly.
   • Infrastructure savings:
     • Eliminates Selenium Grid and third-party orchestration spend.
     • Reduces licenses for debugging/trace tools (Playwright includes them).
       As a result, you might see higher upfront investment in training and migration time, compensated by lower long-term QA costs and faster time-to-market.
3. Things to Remember
   From the field, successful migrations follow a few non-negotiables:
   • Start small: Migrate critical-path tests (auth, checkout, billing) first. Prove the gains.
   • Run in parallel: Keep Selenium running alongside Playwright for at least 1–2 quarters to reduce business risk.
   • Measure everything: Track migration % complete, test runtime, flakiness rates, and CI feedback time. Show progress with real numbers.
   • Don’t mix migrations: If possible, don’t change programming languages and frameworks at the same time. Keep scope focused.
   • Train and support: Pair programming, workshops, and documentation prevent skill gaps from becoming blockers.

As a leader, migration should be treated like any other infrastructure upgrade: scoped, phased, and measured. The risks of doing nothing (slow QA, flakiness, wasted engineering hours) are greater than the risks of a well-managed transition.

How ThinkSys Migrate Teams to Playwright

At ThinkSys, we’ve guided multiple organizations through their move from Selenium and other legacy tools to Playwright. In doing so, we’ve seen what works, what blocks progress, and how to balance speed with safety. Our approach is rooted in hands-on client work. The roadmap below reflects the best practices we’ve consistently applied, adapted from migrations and the lessons captured during working with our clients.

1. Start with a Test Audit and Understanding the Flow

We’ve found that no migration succeeds without a clear baseline. That’s why we begin by auditing the existing test suite:

• Pull test cases from Jira, TestRail, or Selenium repositories.
• Map them against current application flows. (Outdated tests tied to old UI don’t get migrated; they get replaced.)
• Identify tests by flakiness, runtime, and business criticality.

This audit often reveals that 15–20% of Selenium tests are redundant or tied to legacy flows. Cleaning these out upfront saves significant effort.

2. Use AI-Assisted Workflows, Validated by Experts

One of the most effective accelerators we’ve implemented is the use of AI tooling (e.g., Cursor) to automatically convert Selenium/Java test cases into Playwright/TypeScript or JavaScript.

• AI handles the bulk of conversion, but we never rely on it blindly.
• Manual validation is essential, especially for locators, complex workflows, and sensitive data handling.
• Security guardrails: We ensure no credentials or sensitive info are hardcoded during conversion.

We have seen that AI reduces migration effort by ~30–32%, but expert oversight made the difference.

3. Replace What’s Outdated, Don’t Just Migrate

Migrating tests for retired UIs or flows is wasted effort. Instead, we:

• Identify and retire obsolete Selenium cases.
• Build new Playwright cases for modern UI and functionality.
• Ensure all mission-critical paths (login, checkout, billing) are included early in migration.

One client attempted a 1:1 migration of their entire Selenium suite. Halfway in, they realized 30% of cases no longer reflected the live app. Our structured audit avoided that rework.

4. Build CI/CD Readiness Early

For clients without headless test pipelines, we make CI/CD setup a migration milestone.

• Configure Playwright in GitHub Actions, Jenkins, GitLab, or Azure DevOps.
• Enable headless execution from the start.
• Wire in reporting (HTML, JUnit) plus trace, screenshots, and video capture.

Teams that invested in CI/CD early were able to shadow-run Playwright tests in parallel with Selenium, reducing risk and building confidence before cutover.

5. Phased Implementation Roadmap

We recommend, and have repeatedly validated, a phased migration model:

• Phase 1 – Pilot
  • Migrate 5–10 high-value smoke/regression tests.
  • Integrate Playwright into CI/CD.
  • Prove faster execution, reduced flakiness, and clearer reporting.
• Phase 2 – Regression Expansion
  • Broaden to feature-level workflows.
  • Create shared utilities, fixtures, and page objects for consistency.
  • Document best practices for internal teams.
• Phase 3 – Full Coverage
  • Migrate remaining test cases.
  • Retire Selenium in areas already covered by Playwright.
  • Run both frameworks in parallel until Playwright proves stable.
• Phase 4 – Cleanup & Optimization
  • Remove Selenium infrastructure.
  • Refactor Playwright tests for clarity.
  • Adopt advanced Playwright features: mocking, network interception, visual checks.

The “pilot first” approach builds trust. Every client we’ve worked with got better results after seeing the pilot’s numbers (speed, stability, reduced reruns) were visible.

Conclusion

We discussed how Selenium served its era, but today it creates more friction than value. Playwright addresses those challenges with speed, reliability, and alignment to modern pipelines. We’ve walked through why it matters, the obstacles leaders face, and the strategies that make migration achievable without disruption.

Now you have options. You can keep patching Selenium and live with the cost of slow, flaky tests. Or you can take the structured path to Playwright. We showed you how ThinkSys addresses Selenium to Playwright migration challenges for our clients. So if you ever feel stuck at any point, feel free to reach out to us.