Theory is nice. Let me give you five real scenarios from actual projects where Playwright made the difference.
The app uses Google OAuth. User clicks "Sign in with Google," a popup opens, they enter credentials on Google's domain, the popup closes, and the app is logged in. Cypress CANNOT do this -- it runs inside the browser and cannot handle popups or cross-origin navigation. Playwright handles it with three lines of code.
test('Google OAuth login', async ({ page, context }) => {
await page.goto('/login');
// Click "Sign in with Google" and wait for the popup
const [popup] = await Promise.all([
context.waitForEvent('page'),
page.getByRole('button', { name: 'Sign in with Google' }).click(),
]);
// Interact with the Google login page (different origin)
await popup.getByLabel('Email').fill('test@gmail.com');
await popup.getByRole('button', { name: 'Next' }).click();
await popup.getByLabel('Password').fill('testpass123');
await popup.getByRole('button', { name: 'Next' }).click();
// Popup closes automatically. Verify we are logged in.
await expect(page.getByText('Welcome, Test User')).toBeVisible();
});The client requires the app to work on Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. With Selenium, that means managing three different driver binaries, dealing with version mismatches, and setting up a Grid. With Playwright, it is one config file and one command.
A test passes locally but fails in Jenkins. With Selenium, you add screenshots, add more logs, push, wait for CI, check logs, repeat. With Playwright, you enable trace recording, download the trace.zip artifact, open Trace Viewer, and see exactly what happened -- DOM state, network requests, console errors -- all at the exact moment of failure.
A banking app opens a payment gateway in a new tab. You fill payment details in the new tab, it closes, and you verify the payment status in the original tab. Playwright handles this natively. Cypress cannot open new tabs at all.
The app depends on a third-party payment API that is slow and unreliable in staging. With Playwright's network interception, you mock the API response -- the test runs in milliseconds and never depends on an external service.
In interviews, always talk about WHY you chose a tool, not just WHAT tool you use. Mention specific problems you solved. "We chose Playwright because our OAuth flow required cross-origin popup handling, which Cypress could not support" -- that is a strong answer.
Key Point: Playwright shines when you need cross-origin testing, multi-tab workflows, reliable CI debugging, or API mocking.