Customer Success Story: n8n
How Currents helped n8n migrate from Cypress to Playwright, reducing test flakiness by 90% and giving the team clear visibility and control over their test results.
Introduction
When n8n decided to migrate from Cypress to Playwright, the team explored several test reporting tools to support the transition. Currents quickly stood out, providing the visibility and control they needed to make the migration feasible. Currents made the migration smooth, reduced test flakiness by 90%, and gave the team clear visibility and control over their test results.
Company Overview
n8n.io is a workflow automation platform that enables technical and non‑technical users to connect systems, build automations, and orchestrate complex processes.
The platform has achieved wide adoption, with hundreds of thousands of active users globally, over 169K stars on GitHub, and over 100 million Docker pulls for self‑hosted deployments, making it one of the most successful projects on GitHub.
It also boasts a large and active ecosystem, with 400+ built-in integrations and thousands of community-developed workflows. Because n8n is highly flexible and constantly evolving, maintaining reliable tests is crucial.
The challenge: scalable, reliable end-to-end testing
Before Playwright, n8n relied on Cypress for UI and end-to-end testing. While functional, the setup increasingly limited the QA team and engineering organization.
Key challenges included:
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Flaky tests by design: Cypress’s DOM interaction model made it easy to introduce flaky tests.
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Limited integration with Node and backend tooling: Cypress lacked proper integration with Node.js, making it difficult to hook into backend processes or run API tests natively.
Cypress runs tests inside the browser alongside the application being tested. While this gives it direct access to the DOM, it creates a barrier between your tests and Node.js/backend capabilities.
Playwright tests run in Node.js directly, with the browser being controlled remotely. That has certain advantages like:
- any Node.js library works natively in your tests
- you can directly call APIs, connect to databases, or manipulate files during tests
- natively use tools like Testcontainers to spin up Docker containers (databases, message queues, etc.) programmatically during tests
- run API tests natively in the same framework without workarounds
For example, with Playwright, you could write a test that:
- Spins up a Postgres container using Testcontainers
- Seeds it with test data using a Node.js database client
- Runs your UI tests against an app connected to that database
- Tears everything down
- Local performance constraints: tests could not be run in parallel locally, slowing iteration and developer feedback loops.
These issues significantly impacted internal QA productivity, test reliability, and confidence in results.
Why n8n moved to Playwright
The decision to migrate was driven by engineering needs rather than trend-following.
Playwright offered:
- More reliable DOM handling
- Native support for parallel execution (including locally)
- First-class integration with Node.js
- Compatibility with advanced tooling like Testcontainers
The tests were easier to write, more reliable, and we could integrate with things like test containers—something we couldn’t do with Cypress at all.
Declan Carroll, Senior Quality Engineer at n8nThe migration itself took roughly one quarter and involved a small, focused group: two QA engineers and a few developers.
The missing piece: test reporting at scale
While Playwright solved execution and reliability problems, it introduced a new risk. n8n needed a reporting solution that was:
- Comparable to Cypress Cloud
- Easy for developers to understand
- Zero-maintenance (no custom dashboards or Allure setups)
- Suitable for both Cypress (during migration) and Playwright (long-term)
That's where Currents became the enabler.
One of the blockers was: is there somewhere like Cypress Cloud where developers can easily see what’s going on? Without that, I’m not sure the migration would’ve been as well received.
Declan Carroll, Senior Quality Engineer at n8nAfter evaluating alternatives, Currents stood out as the most practical and developer-friendly option.
Currents as a migration facilitator
During the migration period, Currents acted as the single source of truth for test results across both frameworks.
This allowed n8n to:
- Migrate incrementally without losing visibility
- Keep developers engaged with clear, accessible reports
- Avoid building or maintaining custom reporting infrastructure
I was going to manage Allure reports or custom GitHub pages. Currents removed that entire problem.
Declan Carroll, Senior Quality Engineer at n8nResults after migrating to Playwright + Currents
Flakiness reduced by ~85–90%
- Before (Cypress): ~2–3% flaky test rate
- After (Playwright + Currents): ~0.3%
Currents played a key role by making flaky tests easy to identify, analyze, and fix.
It’s easy to go in, see what’s trending as flaky, line it up with traces, and understand when and why it was introduced.
Declan Carroll, Senior Quality Engineer at n8nFaster feedback and detection of regressions
Playwright enabled parallel execution and faster test runs. More importantly, Currents made performance regressions visible.
A real example:
Someone made a small change to a central helper. Tests still passed—but it added ~30% to total execution time. Without the dashboard, we wouldn’t have caught that for weeks.
Declan Carroll, Senior Quality Engineer at n8nBetter test coverage and deeper integrations
With Playwright and Currents in place, n8n expanded what they could realistically test:
- Full infrastructure tests using Testcontainers
- Rich trace analysis
- Coverage data uploaded and tracked alongside test results
It lets us test things we just couldn’t test easily otherwise.
Declan Carroll, Senior Quality Engineer at n8nCurrents provided a centralized dashboard where n8n could visualize traces and coverage results, making it easy for the team to track, analyze, and act on test outcomes.
Developer adoption and satisfaction
Developers became more involved in writing and maintaining tests.
The tooling is better. Trace Viewer is great. Developers are happier and more willing to contribute. It was a very good idea to move from Cypress to Playwright.
Declan Carroll, Senior Quality Engineer at n8nCurrents in n8n’s daily workflow
Beyond migration, Currents is now embedded in n8n’s daily workflow.
Key areas of ongoing value:
- Test Explorer & Flakiness Insights: Quickly identify problem areas and clean up flaky tests.
- Test Observability: Test results, coverage, performance, and history in one place.
- Open API Access: Used by n8n to build custom integrations and solutions, without paying extra or hitting feature gates.
The Currents advantage for Playwright teams
Evaluating alternatives, Declan found few tools that met the needs of Playwright users. He highlights why Currents stands out:
Definitely one of the best ones of those around for what it actually does. Most other companies don’t really understand what’s important to show in tests. Currents gets that.
Declan Carroll, Senior Quality Engineer at n8nFinal takeaway
Currents didn’t just replace Cypress Cloud for n8n—it made a complex migration feasible, reduced flakiness dramatically, and continues to support higher-quality testing with less overhead.
For teams that are serious about their Playwright testing, Currents is the solution to go with.
Declan Carroll, Senior Quality Engineer at n8nCurrents delivers the right insights, in the right way, for teams running Playwright testing.
Join hundreds of teams using Currents.
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