Cypress is a JavaScript-based framework for automating web browsers that allows developers and QA engineers to test web applications. It consists of spec, page object, page selector, and constants files. Cypress provides features like time travel debugging, automatic waiting, network traffic control, consistent results, and cross-browser testing. While Cypress only supports JavaScript and has a simple setup, Selenium supports multiple languages, frameworks, and requires downloading browser drivers. Both have large, global communities supporting their use.