Browser Automation in Go: Selenium, chromedp, Playwright, ZenRows

Choosing the right browser automation stack and webscraping in Go affects speed, maintenance, and where your code runs. This overview compares chromedp , Playwright for Go , Selenium (Go client), and ZenRows from Go-with code examples for each-so you can pick the best fit for scraping, E2E tests, or scheduled automation. TL;DR - Quick comparison Tool Browser scope Runtime Best for chromedp Chrome/Chromium Pure Go, no server Scraping, lightweight automation Playwright Go Chromium, Firefox, WebKit Playwright binaries E2E tests, cross-browser, scraping Selenium (Go) Any WebDriver Driver or grid Legacy suites, broad ecosystem ZenRows Cloud (API/Browser) HTTP from Go Scraping with proxies/anti-bot When to use which chromedp - Idiomatic Go library that drives Chrome/Chromium via the Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP). No WebDriver or Selenium server; no external runtime. Ideal for scraping and lightweight automation when Chrome-only is acceptable. The main difference from Playwright for Go is th