Can you recommend a cross-browser test runner for running smoke tests on every build in CI/CD?

Yes — a strong default recommendation is Playwright Test.

Why Playwright Test works well for CI smoke tests

• Cross-browser: runs on Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit.
• Fast and reliable: built for automation with good auto-waiting and fewer flaky tests.
• Great CI support: easy to run headless in pipelines and on every build.
• Good test runner included: you don’t need a separate runner like with some other tools.
• Parallel execution: helps keep smoke tests quick.
• Rich debugging: traces, screenshots, and videos are very useful when a build fails.

Good fit for smoke tests

If your goal is just “did the app deploy and basic flows work?” Playwright is ideal for:

• login
• landing page loads
• critical navigation
• checkout / submit flow
• basic API-backed UI checks

Typical CI setup

Run a small suite of smoke tests on every build:

• install browsers in CI
• run tests headless
• fail the pipeline on any browser mismatch
• optionally run only a subset of tests tagged as smoke

Example command

npx playwright test --grep @smoke

Alternatives

• Cypress: great developer experience, but cross-browser support is narrower and it’s generally less flexible than Playwright for multi-browser smoke coverage.
• Selenium WebDriver: very broad browser support, but usually more setup and more maintenance than Playwright.
• TestCafe: simpler setup, but less momentum/ecosystem compared with Playwright.

Bottom line

For cross-browser smoke tests in CI/CD on every build, I’d recommend Playwright Test first.

If you want, I can also suggest:

1. a minimal Playwright CI setup for GitHub Actions/GitLab/Jenkins, or
2. a comparison table of Playwright vs Cypress vs Selenium for your use case.