Cypress to Playwright Migration: A Step-by-Step Guide

Migrating from Cypress to Playwright is presented as largely mechanical at the syntax level but requiring careful redesign around behavioral differences such as Playwright’s strict locator mode, async assertion model, isolated browser contexts, and network-routing behavior. The recommended approach is to install Playwright alongside Cypress, separate their TypeScript configurations, keep both suites running in CI, establish shared configuration, authentication through storage state, and fixtures or page objects before migrating tests by value and fragility, especially cross-origin, multi-tab, and Safari-related cases. Key conversion risks include locator cardinality, differing text-match semantics, lost retries when assertions use resolved values, navigation status handling, and cy.intercept conversions that require explicit method checks and pre-armed request or response waits. Cypress features including custom commands, aliases, cy.task, jQuery-based then chains, each loops, and shared test state do not have direct equivalents and need architectural changes. Playwright replaces the Cypress App with UI Mode, Trace Viewer, Codegen, and Inspector tools, while automated converters such as the archived cy2pw can accelerate basic translations but cannot validate test intent or handle complex patterns reliably. Migration duration depends more on custom infrastructure, network mocking, plugins, and shared commands than raw test count, ranging from days for small simple suites to months for large, heavily customized ones.

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