Playwright is an open-source end-to-end testing framework created by Microsoft. The same people who built Puppeteer at Google left, joined Microsoft, and built Playwright. They took everything they learned and fixed what was broken.
Notice something? There is no "driver" in between. Playwright talks directly to the browser engine using native protocols. Selenium has WebDriver as a middleman. That middleman is where half the flakiness comes from.
Playwright downloads its own browser binaries during installation. You never need to manage ChromeDriver versions or geckodriver downloads. Run "npx playwright install" and you are done.
Key Point: Playwright communicates directly with browser engines -- no WebDriver middleman, no version mismatches.