Nexus StudioSelf-hosted Playwright: your tests, your machines.
Playwright is open source and runs anywhere you can install it. Nexus Studio runs it on machines you control and adds what raw Playwright leaves to you: a recorder, scheduled runs, verdicts and evidence for every failure.
What self-hosted Playwright means
It means the browsers, the test runs and the evidence all live on hardware you control, not on a cloud grid you rent by the session. Nothing about the tests changes: they stay standard Playwright files that you can read, edit and keep.
Four places to run it
Each workspace picks where the engine runs its suites, on the Studio's Docker screen.
| Where | What it is | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Your own PC | Install the Studio on Windows 11 and run there. Nothing else is required. | Starting today, and runs that need real Android phones on USB. Scheduled runs happen while the PC is awake. |
| A mini PC | The same Studio on a dedicated Windows 11 machine that stays on, or an Ubuntu 24.04 LTS box with Docker Engine and Compose v2 that only runs the engine. | Nightly regressions and scheduled runs without tying up a workstation. The evidence stays on its disk. |
| Docker on your machine | The suites run inside the runner container on the same machine and disk, so each run starts from the same image. | Repeatable runs, with the same image on every machine. |
| A VPS over SSH | A server with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, Docker Engine and Compose v2, reached with SSH key authentication, runs the suites in the same container image. The evidence stays there until you pull it. | Extra capacity. Phones, Selenium and Python suites and infrastructure chaos stay on the Studio's machine. |
What Nexus Studio adds to raw Playwright
Playwright runs the tests. Around it, a team still has to build the rest.
Verdicts instead of pass or fail
14 verdicts tell a real defect from a slow network, a bot challenge or a crashed browser. A retry that passes is FLAKY, never a quiet pass. The 14 verdicts
A recorder that writes standard code
The Nexus Recorder writes Playwright or Selenium code as you click, with no AI in the loop. There is no format to migrate out of.
Evidence for every failure
Each failure leaves a report, a screenshot and the console and network data in one folder, and a real failure keeps its video. What a failure leaves behind
Scheduled runs and CI
Watch re-runs suites on a schedule and alerts only when a state changes. GitHub Actions and GitLab CI pipelines are set up on screen. CI/CD
What the machine needs
Windows 11 x64, or Ubuntu 24.04 LTS for a box that only runs the engine. 16 GB of RAM is the minimum and 32 GB is recommended. With adaptive pacing on, the engine sizes how many browsers run at once to the free RAM, at about 0.5 GB per browser by its own estimate. An SSD helps with the evidence and the videos. System requirements
Questions
Can I self-host Playwright without a cloud grid?
Yes. Playwright runs on your own PC, in Docker or on a Linux server. Nexus Studio runs the suites there and keeps the results and evidence on your disks.
Does anything leave my network?
The only connection the Studio makes on its own is the license check. Tests, results and evidence stay on machines you control. Own your infrastructure
How does it compare with BrowserStack or Sauce Labs?
Those run your tests in their cloud and charge per parallel session. Nexus Studio runs on your machines and is priced per machine. Side by side, with vendor price pages
Which browsers does it run?
Chromium, Firefox and WebKit as Playwright ships them, and real Android phones over USB. iPhone and iPad are covered through WebKit emulation, not on physical devices.
What does it cost?
The Individual plan is USD 79 a month or USD 790 a year for 1 machine, with every feature, and there is no charge per user, per test or per parallel run. See pricing
Run it on your own machine.
Free for 30 days, with every feature, on your machines. No card needed.