TL;DR: Snapshot tests are a trap. I know because I walked straight into it.

📖 Reading time: ~28 min

What's in this article

The Problem: Your React Tests Are Either Slow, Brittle, or Both

My Current Testing Stack at a Glance

1. Vitest — What I Switched to From Jest and Haven't Looked Back

2. Jest — Still the Default for a Reason, Even If I'm Moving Away

3. React Testing Library — Not a Framework, But You're Already Using It Wrong

4. Playwright — My Go-To for E2E Since I Stopped Trusting Cypress in CI

5. Cypress — Still Worth It for Teams New to E2E Testing

Side-by-Side: Which Framework for Which Situation

The Problem: Your React Tests Are Either Slow, Brittle, or Both

Snapshot tests are a trap. I know because I walked straight into it. You write a toMatchSnapshot() call, feel productive, commit it, and three weeks later you're approving a 400-line snapshot diff because someone changed a button's aria-label . The test isn't telling you anything broke — it's just screaming about change.…