BrowserType.launch: Executable doesn't exist — how to fix?

Question

I’m building a Python Telegram bot (using paid version of Chat GPT), deployed as a background service on Render. The bot runs every 5 minutes and performs:

Symbol screening via Bybit API (aiohttp)

Saves filtered symbols to shortlisted.json

Opens TradingView in headless Chromium via Playwright

Analyzes candle colors via OpenCV and sends Telegram alerts

Stack: Python 3.10 + Playwright + python-telegram-bot + aiohttp Hosting: Render (Frankfurt region, background service) Browser path: /tmp/playwright (set in render.yaml and code)

render.yaml:

services:
 - type: background
 name: bybit-bot
 env: python
 region: frankfurt
 branch: main
 envVars:
 - key: PLAYWRIGHT_BROWSERS_PATH
 value: /tmp/playwright
 buildCommand: |
 pip install -r requirements.txt
 playwright install chromium
 startCommand: python bot.py

requirements.txt (fragment):

aiohttp
python-telegram-bot==13.15
opencv-python
playwright

Key code from shortlist_filter.py:

import os
os.environ["PLAYWRIGHT_BROWSERS_PATH"] = "/tmp/playwright"
from check_candles import take_screenshot_and_analyze
...
await take_screenshot_and_analyze(symbol) # launches playwright.chromium

Persistent error on every run:

BrowserType.launch: Executable doesn't exist at /tmp/playwright/chromium_headless_shell-1181/chrome-linux/headless_shell Please run: playwright install

What I’ve already tried:

• Added PLAYWRIGHT_BROWSERS_PATH to both render.yaml and code
• Set playwright install chromium in buildCommand
• Tried calling playwright install chromium manually
• Verified the bot deploys successfully, but fails at launch
• Playwright is installed, but browser binary seems missing

The failure occurs at browser = playwright.chromium.launch(...)

I did run playwright install, and it's already included in the render.yaml as part of the buildCommand. Here’s the part of the render.yaml: buildCommand: | pip install -r requirements.txt playwright install chromium startCommand: python bot.py / I also explicitly set the environment variable. BUT the Render log still shows error: BrowserType.launch: Executable doesn't exist at /tmp/playwright/chromium_headless_shell-1181/chrome-linux/headless_shell

PS. I build this bot using Chat GPT and when I was building the first part of it, I discovered that it was using old data for the Exchange API documentation, for example - so I had to manually find path to latest version of API data and upload it to Chat GPT, so that it generates the correct code. I don't know if the same problem could be with Playwright documentation

What I need:

• How to properly install and run Chromium in headless mode on Render? (PPS - when I was testing this code using VS Code on my Mac, I have noticed, that it doesn't work with headless browser, I don't know if non-headless one is supported on Render).
• Why doesn’t playwright install chromium persist the binary to /tmp/playwright?

Anyone faced similar issues with Playwright on render?