Playwright itself is free and open source under the Apache 2.0 license, with no paid edition. The cost of running Playwright in 2026 comes from three places that the framework’s price tag never shows: the CI compute that runs your suite, an optional managed browser grid, and the tool you use to store and share results. Each one bills differently. This guide lays the paid Playwright ecosystem side by side and names what you actually pay for.
Is Playwright free to use?
Playwright is free. It’s an open-source framework from Microsoft, released under Apache 2.0, with no license fee, no seat cap, and no paid tier of the framework itself. The “playwright cost” you eventually pay is for infrastructure around it, not for Playwright.
What’s included for free
Everything the framework does is in the free package:
- All three browser engines (Chromium, Firefox, WebKit), installed with
npx playwright install - Parallel execution across workers and test sharding across machines
- The HTML reporter, trace viewer, and built-in retries
- The full API, codegen, and CI integration examples
There is no feature gate. A 5,000-test suite runs on the same free Playwright as a 50-test one.
Does Playwright have a paid version?
No. Playwright has no paid version, no Pro edition, and no enterprise SKU of the framework. Microsoft sells a separate hosted service (Microsoft Playwright Testing) that runs Playwright suites on a managed cloud grid, but that is a distinct product you opt into, not an upgrade to Playwright. You can run Playwright forever without paying Microsoft anything.
Where Playwright actually costs money
The real bill comes from running and operating the suite, not from the framework. There are two recurring costs almost every team hits, and a third that most budgets forget. How those costs are metered matters more than any sticker price: a real Gaffer customer running 7 projects uploads roughly 1,100 test reports a week and pays a flat $15/month with $0 in overage, where a per-test-result or per-test-minute meter would scale that same load straight onto the bill.
CI compute is the cost most people miss
The largest hidden cost of Playwright is CI minutes. Browser tests are slow and parallel, so a large suite burns build minutes fast. On GitHub Actions, for example, included minutes are capped per plan and overage is billed per-minute, and Playwright sharding multiplies that by the number of parallel machines you run. This cost is real whether or not you ever buy a Playwright-adjacent service, and it scales with suite size and run frequency. Check your CI provider’s current per-minute rate; it is the line item that grows first.
Managed cloud testing grids
If your own CI runners can’t supply enough parallel browsers, a managed grid runs them for you. Microsoft Playwright Testing is the first-party option here. These services rent browser capacity, so they bill for the compute time your tests consume rather than a flat subscription.
Microsoft Playwright Testing pricing
Microsoft Playwright Testing bills per test-minute: you pay for the total wall-clock minutes your browsers spend running across the cloud, summed over every parallel worker. It runs on Azure, so billing flows through an Azure subscription. There is no per-seat charge; the meter is compute time.
How per-test-minute billing works
Per-test-minute means the meter counts every minute each browser is active, multiplied by your parallelism. A suite that takes 10 minutes of wall-clock time across 20 parallel browsers consumes roughly 200 test-minutes, not 10. Heavy parallelism makes suites faster and the bill larger at the same time. The published rate is a per-1,000-test-minute price on Azure; because Microsoft adjusts Azure pricing over time, confirm the current number on the Microsoft Playwright Testing pricing page before you budget.
What’s included in the free trial
Microsoft Playwright Testing has offered a free trial allotment of test-minutes so you can evaluate the grid before the meter starts. The exact included quantity is set by Microsoft and has changed across the product’s preview and GA phases, so treat any specific figure as something to verify on their pricing page rather than a fixed number.
Currents.dev pricing for Playwright
Currents is a results-and-orchestration service for Playwright and Cypress that bills per test-result. You pay for the number of individual test results you upload, so the meter tracks suite size multiplied by how often CI runs, not browser compute. It’s a different axis than Microsoft’s grid: Currents doesn’t run your browsers, it ingests and orchestrates the results your CI produces.
How per-test-result billing works
A test-result is one test’s outcome in one run. A 1,000-test suite produces 1,000 results per run; retries and reruns add more. Currents sells monthly tiers defined by an included test-result quota, with overage once you exceed it. Because the quotas and price points change, check the current Currents pricing page for the exact tier sizes; the model to understand is that your bill tracks tests x runs, so a small suite run hundreds of times a day and a large suite run a few times a day can land at very different costs.
Estimating the bill
To estimate a per-test-result bill, multiply your test count by your CI runs per month, then add retries:
results/month = test_count x runs_per_month x (1 + retry_rate)A 1,200-test suite run 200 times a month with a 5% retry rate is about 252,000 results per month. Whether that’s cheap or expensive depends entirely on which quota tier it lands in, which is why the per-result model is hard to predict for teams whose run frequency varies.
Playwright reporting and test storage: what it costs
Storing and sharing Playwright results is the cost most budgets miss, because neither the free OSS tooling nor the cloud grids cover it. Playwright’s HTML reporter writes a report to disk; it does nothing to host that report at a URL, keep history across runs, or let a teammate without CI access open it. Closing that gap is a separate tool with its own pricing model.
Why you need a separate tool to store and share results
The Playwright HTML report is a folder of static files. To make it a link a colleague can click, you have to host it somewhere and keep it after the CI job’s artifacts expire. To answer “is this test flaky or did it actually break?” you need history across runs, which a single report can’t show. Teams either wire up an artifact bucket and a static host themselves, or use a hosting platform that ingests the report and keeps the history.
Flat-rate vs metered pricing for test-result storage
Result-hosting tools split into two pricing models. Metered tools (per test-result, per seat) get more expensive as your suite grows, your team grows, or your run frequency climbs. Flat-rate tools charge the same regardless of how many results you upload or how many people view them.
Gaffer is the flat-rate option. It hosts Playwright reports at stable URLs, builds flaky-test detection and pass-rate trends across runs, and shares results by link without a login. Pricing is a flat monthly fee with unlimited users on every plan:
- Free: $0/month, 500 MB storage, 7-day retention
- Pro: $15/month, 10 GB storage, 30-day retention
- Team: $49/month, 50 GB storage, 90-day retention
Storage overage on Pro and Team is $0.50/GB/month; the per-run number of uploads doesn’t change the price. The 7-project customer above, at ~1,100 reports a week, never crosses the storage limit and never sees a metered line item: no per-test-result charge, no per-test-minute surprise at the end of the month. (Those figures are a representative usage profile drawn from real account data, anonymized.)
Playwright pricing compared: OSS vs cloud grid vs results platform
These three products solve different problems and bill on different axes, so a like-for-like price comparison is the wrong question. The right question is which cost you’re trying to control: browser compute, result volume, or sharing and history. The table below maps each.
Side-by-side: Microsoft Playwright Testing vs Currents vs Gaffer
| Service | What it does | Billing model | You pay per | Free tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Playwright (OSS) | The test framework itself | Free, open source (Apache 2.0) | Nothing | Entirely free |
| Microsoft Playwright Testing | Managed cloud browser grid (runs your suite) | Per test-minute, via Azure | Browser compute minutes x parallelism | Trial allotment of test-minutes (verify current amount) |
| Currents.dev | Result ingestion + CI orchestration | Per test-result, monthly tiers | Each uploaded test result (tests x runs) | Free/trial tier (verify current terms) |
| Gaffer | Test-result hosting, sharing, flaky/trend analytics | Flat monthly rate | The plan, not the volume | Free plan: $0, 500 MB, 7-day retention, unlimited users |
Confirm the exact per-unit rates for Microsoft Playwright Testing and Currents on their own pricing pages before budgeting; their numbers move. Gaffer’s are listed in full on the pricing page.
What should you budget for Playwright in 2026?
Budget for the framework at $0, then add the costs that match how you run it. If your own CI runners handle the parallelism, you skip a managed grid entirely and your only Playwright-specific spend is result hosting. If your suite is large or runs constantly, a per-test-result service can grow unpredictably, which is the case where flat-rate hosting is more predictable. If you’ve already found per-result pricing painful, the Currents alternative comparison walks through the same flat-vs-metered tradeoff in detail.
The trap to avoid: budgeting for the grid and forgetting the storage. A team can pay a cloud grid to run the suite and still have nowhere to keep or share the results once the CI artifacts expire. That second cost is small and flat if you plan for it, and an annoying scramble if you don’t.
FAQ
Is Playwright free or paid?
Playwright is free. It’s open source under Apache 2.0 with no paid version of the framework. Costs come from CI compute, optional managed browser grids, and result hosting, not from Playwright itself.
Does Playwright have a paid version?
No. There is no paid edition, Pro tier, or enterprise SKU of the Playwright framework. Microsoft sells a separate hosted service, Microsoft Playwright Testing, that runs Playwright suites on a cloud grid, but that’s a distinct product, not an upgrade to Playwright.
How much does Microsoft Playwright Testing cost?
Microsoft Playwright Testing bills per test-minute through an Azure subscription, so you pay for the browser compute your tests consume (wall-clock minutes multiplied by parallelism) rather than a flat fee or per seat. The published rate is a per-1,000-test-minute price; confirm the current number on Microsoft’s pricing page, since Azure rates change.
How much does Currents cost for Playwright?
Currents bills per test-result, sold in monthly tiers with an included quota and overage beyond it. Your bill tracks suite size multiplied by run frequency (tests x runs), not browser compute. Check the current Currents pricing page for the exact tier sizes.
What’s the cheapest way to store and share Playwright reports?
For a small or growing team, flat-rate hosting is usually cheapest because the bill doesn’t climb with result volume or headcount. Gaffer’s free plan hosts reports at $0 with unlimited users; the Pro plan is $15/month flat. Per-test-result and per-seat tools get more expensive as the suite and team grow.
Playwright costs nothing to run. The spend is in the infrastructure around it, and the three paid options bill on different axes: per test-minute for a cloud grid, per test-result for orchestration, flat-rate for hosting and history. Match the model to the cost you’re trying to control. Gaffer’s flat pricing is on the pricing page.