Open-Source Software Testing Tools like Selenium and Playwright Will Continue to Dominate the Software Testing Market Even in the Era of Generative AI

Nagmani Lnu is the Director of Quality Engineering at SWBC, a leading multinational fintech organization based in Texas. With over 20 years of experience spanning Cloud, Artificial Intelligence, and Software Engineering, he brings deep expertise in driving innovation and quality transformation. Nagmani holds a Diploma in Machine Learning and Data Science from The University of Texas at Austin and is an active member of the IEEE.

The software testing landscape is undergoing an intense transformation with the rise of AI (Artificial Intelligence)-driven automation. Yet, despite these advancements, open-source tools like Selenium and Playwright are poised to maintain their dominance in the market. Thanks for Generative AI, AI Agents, and MCP server evolution, these tools may now start taking the market share of commercial tools like TOSCA, Eggplant etc. which for a long time had a unique selling point offering of low code no code, self-healing will now have to work hard to find another proposition as these functionalities are getting added to Selenium and Playwright as part of their AI Agents.

Before digging into my analysis, let me begin with software testing history, which formally became an integral part of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) in the early 2000s, during the rise of the Waterfall development model. This era emphasized structured stages, from requirements to design, development, testing, and maintenance, where testing emerged as a distinct and essential phase ensuring software quality before release. There were almost no prominent open-source functional testing tools. The market was dominated by a tool called WinRunner from a company called Mercury, which later got rebranded as Quick Test Pro (QTP) after being acquired by HP. Other commercial tools at that time were IBM Rational Robot, and Borland Silk Test. Companies used to pay a license cost. Despite that, there used to be multiple challenges, such as, support for cross-browser testing and multiple languages. QTP was based on VB Script and limited to Internet Explorer, which used to be the number one browser in the industry. In 2004, Mozilla launched Firefox, forcing the industry to think about a testing tool that supports multiple browsers. At the same time, Jason Huggins from Thoughtworks launched Selenium as an open-source testing tool designed to automate testing on the Firefox Browser. Then came September 2008, when Google launched Chrome with the V8 engine, which made web applications much faster. This triggered a wave of dynamic, AJAX-heavy websites, which in turn demanded stronger test automation tools. Selenium quickly adapted by creating ChromeDriver for browser automation, which helped it automate not just Firefox but also the Chrome browser. Moreover, its language agnosticism made it a clearly distinct player in a market where leaders like QTP were only supporting VBScript and Internet Explorer. This is when we started seeing a gradual decrease in commercial test automation products and a significant increase in open-source tools like Selenium. Very soon, it became an industry household name. 

With advancements in technologies and DevOps, the focus on speed of execution became a concern for Selenium. To solve this concern, another open-source tool from Microsoft called Playwright, released in 2020, emerged as another leader second to Selenium. 

According to a Research Nester 2024 report, the automation testing market was valued at $33.13 billion in 2024 and is projected to surpass $211.16 billion by 2037. Among the tools driving this growth, Selenium and Playwright hold more than 50% of the market share, highlighting the enduring popularity and trust in open-source solutions. 

While open-source tools like Selenium and Playwright have clearly gained the market leadership position, new commercial tools like Tricentis Tosca, launched in 2006, began establishing themselves by offering a new proposition of script less automation, which was later enhanced with self-healing capabilities following the introduction of AI in the 2010s. More commercial tools with this AI enablement came, such as Testim.io or mable.io. All these commercials tried to make themselves unique by offering enterprise solutions of script less automation and self-healing, emphasizing significant savings on test planning effort. Large companies were attracted to this feature. As of now, commercial tools like Tricentis Tosca have captured a respectable share of around 20%, largely catering to large enterprises that require end-to-end support, governance, and advanced features.  (Peerspot)

However, the situation has changed again. Thanks to the evolution of Generative AI, which has created a wave of AI agents and MCP servers, enabling open-source tools to bring unique features like script less automation and self-healing, what was once niche to commercial tools is now becoming available to open-source users. 

On Oct 6, 2025, Playwright released three AI Agents named Planner, Generator, and Healer. These agents create a test plan, generate an automation script, and self-heal in case of failure, all using generative AI integrated with common development IDEs like Visual Studio Code (GitHub). This is a game-changer and may put commercial companies in the same position as QTP faced in 2004. They need to innovate quickly to find another niche that these open sources can’t.