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ATK Ecosystem & Alternatives

When to Use

Choosing between ATK, Lullabot's playwright-drupal and core's PHPUnit FunctionalJavascript, given core's move from Nightwatch to Playwright.

Decision

Tool Strength Weakness
ATK Drupal-aware test catalog for Cypress and Playwright; FedRAMP tests on 2.1 Small adoption (107 sites on drupal.org, 2026-09-24); not covered by security advisories; 2.1 is beta
Lullabot/playwright-drupal Parallel tests on SQLite site copies; Drush from tests; browser console errors; PHP error log attached to results; VisualDiffTestCases Playwright only; no test catalog
PHPUnit FunctionalJavascript (core) Stays in PHP; runs under phpunit via WebDriverTestBase No Drupal site-level test catalog; you write every test
Core's Nightwatch Still ships in core 11.x Core accepted a policy (#3467492, November 2025) to replace it with Playwright

Decision: which to combine?

Goal Combination
Drupal-aware tests + isolated parallel sites ATK tests on Lullabot/playwright-drupal infrastructure
Drupal-aware tests + visual regression ATK + Playwright toHaveScreenshot() (or Lullabot's VisualDiffTestCases)
Just want to start ATK alone: apply the demo recipe, run the catalog, extend
FedRAMP-oriented checks ATK 2.1.0-beta

Drupal Core's Direction

Nightwatch is not deprecated. Core accepted a policy in November 2025 (#3467492) to replace it with Playwright. The migration issue (#3553673) is still open and targets Drupal 12. Nothing has landed in core yet.

Common Mistakes

  • Treating ATK and Lullabot's playwright-drupal as either/or — they solve different problems
  • Starting new Nightwatch coverage — core has decided to move away from it; the work will need migrating
  • Assuming ATK has security advisory coverage — the project has not opted in

See Also