Repo Compare › Browser automation
Playwright vs Cypress vs Puppeteer
A side-by-side look at how actively Playwright, Cypress and Puppeteer are developed on GitHub — popularity, contributor base, commit activity and how quickly issues and pull requests move.
What the numbers say
- Playwright is the most-starred of the 3, with 97k stars — about 1.9× Cypress's 51k.
- Over the 52 weeks to the snapshot, Playwright recorded the most commits (2.6k), against 784 for Puppeteer.
- Playwright has closed or merged the most pull requests in its lifetime: 21k.
- Relative to its popularity, Playwright carries the lightest open-issue load: 1.8 open issues per 1,000 stars, versus 20.4 for Cypress.
Head-to-head
Snapshot taken 30 September 2026.
| Metric | Playwright Active | Cypress Active | Puppeteer Active |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stars | 97k | 51k | 96k |
| Forks | 6.5k | 3.6k | 9.6k |
| Contributors | 816 | 557 | 578 |
| Commits, last 52 weeks | 2.6k | 1.7k | 784 |
| Open issues | 173 | 1.0k | 244 |
| Open pull requests | 35 | 67 | 30 |
| Closed / merged PRs | 21k | 11k | 7.8k |
| Watchers | 608 | 633 | 1.2k |
| Last push | 30 Sep 2026 | 30 Sep 2026 | 30 Sep 2026 |
| Latest release | v1.63.0 (Sep 2026) | v16.1.1 (Sep 2026) | browsers-v3.2.3 (Sep 2026) |
| Main language | TypeScript | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Created | Nov 2019 | Mar 2015 | May 2017 |
Bold marks the highest value in a row. “Active / Slowing / Dormant” is a simple heuristic from how recently code was pushed and open issues per star — a starting point, not a verdict. Stars measure popularity, not quality.
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