Selenium
Hacker ApprovedRanked 3 of 12 browser automation tools by recommenders
Long-established free browser automation tool people use for scripting and testing. Critics say it is brittle and flaky on dynamic pages.
Long-established free browser automation tool people use for scripting and testing. Critics say it is brittle and flaky on dynamic pages.
20 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 15
- criticize it
- 5
- approval share
- 75%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 15 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Long-established, widely used ecosystem
“selenium is very entrenched in many parts of the world, especially outside of SF/USA”
Comment from 24 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Vibium – Browser automation for AI and humans, by Selenium's creator” “created an entire ecosystem of tools, users, companies, and economic activity”
Comment from 24 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Vibium – Browser automation for AI and humans, by Selenium's creator” “I'm specifically suggesting Selenium because it's been around so long”
Comment from 10 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: Showboat and Rodney, so agents can demo what they've built” Enabled browser automation, big professional impact
“it was a game changer and had a big impact on my professional life”
Comment from 24 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Vibium – Browser automation for AI and humans, by Selenium's creator” “The good old days of browser automation! Thanks a lot for Selenium”
Comment from 25 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Vibium – Browser automation for AI and humans, by Selenium's creator” “selenium is a masterpiece. Thanks for sharing it with the world”
Comment from 24 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Vibium – Browser automation for AI and humans, by Selenium's creator” - Comment from 25 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Vibium – Browser automation for AI and humans, by Selenium's creator”
Solid, reliable in containers
“I have never had an issue with browser automation like selenium in containers.”
Comment from 16 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: Kubernetes for AI Agents” “Don't get me wrong it's still solid technology though.”
Comment from 25 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Vibium – Browser automation for AI and humans, by Selenium's creator” “Worked well after some initial trial and error.”
Comment from 6 Feb 2026 in “LinkedIn Is Fingerprinting the Browser Extensions”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Brittle and flaky on dynamic pages
“Tools like Selenium and Playwright have introduced explicit waits, which observe the DOM. This helps, but doesn't solve everything.”
Comment from 23 Jan 2026 in “The Slow Death of Productivity: Why Time.sleep() Is Killing Your Automation” “they are a bit brittle with respect to the web design”
Comment from 6 Apr 2026 in “Running Google Gemma 4 Locally with LM Studio's New Headless CLI and Claude Code” “Selenium is hot flaky garbage”
Comment from 10 Mar 2026 on Hacker News Dated, overengineered, not built for AI
“neither selenium nor playwright were designed with ai in mind from day 1”
Comment from 24 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Vibium – Browser automation for AI and humans, by Selenium's creator” “massively overengineered (Puppeteer, Selenium, computer-use)”
Comment from 22 Mar 2026 on Hacker News “isn't Selenium technology from the 90's?”
Comment from 10 Jun 2026 in “Show HN: An Alternative to Selenium IDE”
Other browser automation tools people recommend
The four most recommended other browser automation tools, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Playwright | 137 | 28 | 83% | 12 | 3 mo3 owners | Approved |
| Playwright CLI | 19 | 1 | 95% | 5 | — | Approved |
| SeleniumThis page | 15 | 5 | 75% | 5 | — | Approved |
| Puppeteer | 14 | 16 | 47% | 10 | — | — |
| Stagehand | 13 | 2 | 87% | 7 | — | Approved |
What people said
All 21 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Spin up a selenium browser to access something in servicenow”
“isn't Selenium technology from the 90's?”
“Would be much cheaper and more reproducible.”
“they are a bit brittle with respect to the web design”
“massively overengineered (Puppeteer, Selenium, computer-use)”
“Selenium is hot flaky garbage”
“each page could be dynamically navigated to and loaded with Selenium”
“I have never had an issue with browser automation like selenium in containers.”
“I'm specifically suggesting Selenium because it's been around so long”
“Worked well after some initial trial and error.”
“check Selenium as a source of inspiration”
“Something like selenium is good to automate acceptance testing”
“Tools like Selenium and Playwright have introduced explicit waits, which observe the DOM. This helps, but doesn't solve everything.”
“The good old days of browser automation! Thanks a lot for Selenium”
“where selenium made it possible”
“Don't get me wrong it's still solid technology though.”
“selenium is a masterpiece. Thanks for sharing it with the world”
“it was a game changer and had a big impact on my professional life”
“created an entire ecosystem of tools, users, companies, and economic activity”
“selenium is very entrenched in many parts of the world, especially outside of SF/USA”
“neither selenium nor playwright were designed with ai in mind from day 1”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.