Comparison
Testavi vs Playwright and Cypress
Short version: if your engineers want to write and own test code, Playwright and Cypress are excellent and free. If you want checkout and signup covered without anyone babysitting selectors, that's what we built Testavi for.
The part nobody budgets for
Writing an end-to-end test takes an afternoon. Keeping it green takes the rest of its life. Our team spent years on Selenium suites before Testavi, and most of that time went into tests that failed because a page changed, not because the product broke.
The framework authors say as much. Playwright's docs warn that CSS and XPath selectors "can break when the DOM structure changes". Cypress lists brittle selectors as a common mistake and recommends adding dedicated data-* attributes just for tests.
Then there's flakiness. When Google measured it, about 1.5% of all their test runs reported a flaky result, and almost 16% of their tests showed some level of flakiness (Google Testing Blog, 2016). That's Google, with whole teams on test infrastructure.
Side by side
| Playwright / Cypress | Testavi | |
|---|---|---|
| How tests are written | Code (JavaScript or TypeScript) using locators and selectors | Plain-English steps |
| Who writes them | Engineers | Anyone on the team, or us during the pilot |
| When the UI changes | Selectors tied to DOM structure or CSS can break and need updating | Agents find elements visually, like a person |
| Debugging a failure | Traces, screenshots and logs | Video replay with the agent's reasoning for each step |
| Infrastructure | You run it, usually in your CI | Isolated cloud browsers managed by Testavi |
| Cost | Free and open source; you pay in engineering time | Free 30-day pilot, then from €299/month |
Choose Playwright or Cypress if
- Your engineers want tests as code, in the same repo, reviewed like any other change
- You need fine control over network mocking, fixtures and component tests
- You have time to keep selectors up to date as the UI changes
Choose Testavi if
- Checkout, signup and account flows break after redesigns and nobody has time to fix the tests
- PMs or QA should be able to write and read tests without code
- You want critical flows covered this month, not after a test-framework project
You don't have to pick one. Keep your unit and integration tests in code where they belong. Hand the long, fragile, click-through journeys to agents. That split is where we see Testavi fit best.
Protect your most important user flows
We write and maintain tests for your core flows during a free 30-day pilot. No credit card. Plans start at €299/month after that.