Azure Playwright preview

2025-08-06

Azure Playwright is a fully managed Azure service that uses the cloud to enable you to run Playwright tests with much higher parallelization across different operating system-browser combinations simultaneously. This means faster test runs with broader scenario coverage, which helps speed up delivery of features without sacrificing quality. The service also enables you to publish test results and related artifacts to the service and view them in the service portal enabling faster and easier troubleshooting. With Azure Playwright service, you can release features faster and more confidently.

Ready to get started? Jump into our quickstart guide!

Useful Links

Get Started

Follow these steps to run your existing Playwright test suite with the service.

Prerequisites

An Azure account with an active subscription. If you don't have an Azure subscription, create a free account before you begin.
Your Azure account must be assigned the Owner, Contributor, or one of the classic administrator roles.
Azure CLI must be installed in the machine from where you are running Playwright tests.

Create a Workspace

Create the Workspace.

Select the menu button in the upper-left corner of the portal, and then select Create a resource.
Enter Playwright Workspaces in the search box.
Select the Playwright Workspaces card, and then select Create.

Provide the following information to configure a new Playwright workspace:

Field	Description
Subscription	Select the Azure subscription that you want to use for this Playwright workspace.
Resource group	Select an existing resource group. Or select Create new, and then enter a unique name for the new resource group.
Name	Enter a unique name to identify your workspace. The name can only consist of alphanumerical characters, and have a length between 3 and 64 characters.
Location	Select a geographic location to host your workspace. This location also determines where the test execution results are stored.

Note

Optionally, you can configure more details on the Tags tab. Tags are name/value pairs that enable you to categorize resources and view consolidated billing by applying the same tag to multiple resources and resource groups.

After you're finished configuring the resource, select Review + Create.
Review all the configuration settings and select Create to start the deployment of the Playwright workspace.
When the process has finished, a deployment success message appears.
To view the new workspace, select Go to resource.

Install Azure Playwright package

Run this command to install the service package
```
npm init @azure/playwright
```

Installing the service package will create a service config file named playwright.service.config.ts

The service configuration serves to:

Direct and authenticate Playwright to the Azure Playwright service.
Override timeouts for service operations, if needed.

Make sure your project uses @playwright/test version 1.47 or above.

Obtain region endpoint

In the Azure portal, copy the command under Add region endpoint in your set up.

The endpoint URL corresponds to the workspace region. You might see a different endpoint URL in the Azure portal, depending on the region you selected when creating the workspace.

Set up environment

Ensure that the PLAYWRIGHT_SERVICE_URL that you obtained in previous step is available in your environment.

We recommend using dotenv module to manage your environment. With dotenv you'll be using the .env file to define your environment variables.

Don't forget to add .env file to your .gitignore file in order to not leak your secrets.

npm i --save-dev dotenv

.env file

PLAYWRIGHT_SERVICE_URL=wss://eastus.api.playwright.microsoft.com/playwrightworkspaces/workspace-id/browsers

Set up Authentication

To run your Playwright tests in your Azure Playwright workspace, you need to authenticate the Playwright client where you are running the tests with the service. This could be your local dev machine or CI machine.

The service offers two authentication methods: Microsoft Entra ID and Access Tokens.

Microsoft Entra ID uses your Azure credentials, requiring a sign-in to your Azure account for secure access. Alternatively, you can generate an access token from your Playwright workspace and use it in your setup.

Set up authtication using Microsoft Entra ID

Microsoft Entra ID is the default and recommended authentication for the service. From your local dev machine, you can use Azure CLI to sign-in

az login

NOTE: If you are a part of multiple Microsoft Entra tenants, make sure you sign-in to the tenant where your workspace belongs. You can get the tenant id from Azure portal, see Find your Microsoft Entra Tenant. Once you get the ID, sign-in using the command az login --tenant <TenantID>

Set up authentication using access tokens

You can generate an access token from your Azure Playwright workspace and use it in your setup. However, we strongly recommend Microsoft Entra ID for authentication due to its enhanced security. Access tokens, while convenient, function like long-lived passwords and are more susceptible to being compromised.

To use access token based authentication, Enable access-token based authentication
Set up authentication using access tokens

We strongly recommend using Microsoft Entra ID for authentication to the service. If you are using access tokens, see How to Manage Access Tokens

NOTE: To use Azure Playwright in CI pipelines, you need to configure authentication with the service from pipeline, see set up continuous end-to-end testing across different browsers and operating systems

Run the tests

Run Playwright tests against browsers managed by the service using the configuration you created above.

npx playwright test --config=playwright.service.config.ts --workers=20

Next steps

Run tests in a CI/CD pipeline.
Learn how to manage access to the created workspace.
Experiment with different number of workers to determine the optimal configuration of your test suite.

Contributing

This project welcomes contributions and suggestions. Most contributions require you to agree to a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) declaring that you have the right to, and actually do, grant us the rights to use your contribution. For details, visit https://cla.opensource.microsoft.com.

When you submit a pull request, a CLA bot will automatically determine whether you need to provide a CLA and decorate the PR appropriately (e.g., status check, comment). Simply follow the instructions provided by the bot. You will only need to do this once across all repos using our CLA.

This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact opencode@microsoft.com with any additional questions or comments.

Trademarks

This project may contain trademarks or logos for projects, products, or services. Authorized use of Microsoft trademarks or logos is subject to and must follow Microsoft's Trademark & Brand Guidelines. Use of Microsoft trademarks or logos in modified versions of this project must not cause confusion or imply Microsoft sponsorship. Any use of third-party trademarks or logos is subject to those third-party's policies.