Selenium

noun · browser automation · element 87 of 117

The original open-source tool for automating browsers, used to test that a website still works after every change.

My levelProficientComfortable in production. I ship with it without supervision.

In my work since: 2021
Family: Engineering

What is Selenium?

Selenium drives real browsers from code, so a test can open a page, fill a form, click through a checkout and check the result. It started in 2004 and its WebDriver protocol became a W3C standard.

Newer tools such as Playwright and Cypress cover similar ground; Selenium remains common in teams that test across many browsers and languages.

How I use Selenium

At TeamQ, QA ran on Selenium and LambdaTest: automated browser checks before releases, run across the browsers and devices clients used.

Where I have used itSelenium by company and year, from the projects on this site and the rest of my career.

TeamQ DevelopersQA · 2021 to 2025

What Selenium connects to

LambdaTestA cloud of real browsers and devices for testing websites, by hand or with automated scripts, without keeping a device lab.
PlaywrightMicrosoft's framework for browser automation and end-to-end testing across Chromium, Firefox and WebKit.
JavaScriptThe programming language of the browser. It makes pages interactive, and through Node.js it runs on servers too.

Type	Browser automation
Started	2004
Standard	W3C WebDriver