Puppeteer is the original library for Chrome automation created by the DevTools team at Google, released in 2017. It dominated the market for 3-4 years, then part of the team left for Microsoft and built Playwright.
Main differences vs Playwright:
- Chromium-based browsers only (Chrome, Edge). No Firefox, Safari.
- Node.js only. No Python, .NET, Java.
- No auto-wait — you must manually wait for elements.
- Weaker trace/debug.
- Smaller community (still popular though).
When to still use Puppeteer:
- Legacy codebase already using Puppeteer
- Very simple scripts (Chrome-only, simple flow)
- Integration with existing tools (Chrome Headless Recorder, etc.)
For new projects: Playwright is almost always the better choice. Puppeteer is still actively maintained but the development pace has slowed.