Soft Assertions in Playwright (expect.soft): Why They Matter + Examples

What Is an Assertion?

An assertion is a check that compares:

Example:

expect(title).toBe("Home");

This means: "I expect the page title to be ‘Home’. If it is not, fail the test."

Assertions are the core of any automated test. Without assertions, a test only performs actions but never validates results.

Hard Assertions (Default Behavior)

By default, Playwright uses hard assertions.

expect(value).toBe(10);

How hard assertions work:

• If the assertion fails → the test stops immediately.
• The remaining steps in that test never run.
• Only the first failure is reported.

The Problem with Hard Assertions

Playwright assertions are usually hard assertions—meaning the test stops as soon as one assertion fails. That’s fine for critical logic checks, but it can slow down debugging when you want to validate multiple UI elements on a page.

Here’s a simple test with three assertions. These are hard assertions (the default behavior).

import { test, expect } from "@playwright/test";

test("Homepage validations (hard assertions)", async ({ page }) => {
  await page.goto("https://example.com");

  expect(await page.textContent("h1")).toBe("Welcome");   // Assertion 1
  expect(await page.isVisible("#login")).toBe(true);      // Assertion 2
  expect(await page.isVisible("#signup")).toBe(true);     // Assertion 3
});

The key issue: you do not know whether the other two checks were passing or failing—because the test ended early.

Why Debugging Becomes Slow

Let’s say you fix the first failing assertion and run the test again.

This creates a slow loop: Fix → Run → Find next failure → Fix → Run again. It’s especially painful when you’re validating a UI page with many checks.

The Solution: expect.soft()

Soft assertions tell Playwright: "If this fails, record it—but keep going."

import { test, expect } from "@playwright/test";

test("Homepage validations (soft assertions)", async ({ page }) => {
  await page.goto("https://example.com");

  expect.soft(await page.textContent("h1")).toBe("Welcome");
  expect.soft(await page.isVisible("#login")).toBe(true);
  expect.soft(await page.isVisible("#signup")).toBe(true);
});

Important: if any soft assertion fails, the test is still marked as FAILED—you just get more useful feedback in one run.

When to Use Soft vs Hard Assertions

Best Practice: Mix Them

A simple strategy that works well:

• Hard assertion for the critical step (example: "Login succeeded").
• Soft assertions for page validation after that (example: "UI elements are visible").