Load Testing vs Stress Testing: Whats the Difference?

Examples of these load tester software and tools are WebLOAD, LoadView, and Loadrunner. Just as a stress test is a type of performance test, there are types of load tests as well. If your stress test includes a sudden, high ramp-up in the number of virtual users, it is called a Spike Test. If you stress test for a long period of time to check the system’s sustainability over time with a slow ramp-up, it’s called a Soak Test.

Additionally, end users can access your site or applications from anywhere in the world using different browsers, operating systems, and mobile devices, all with varying connection speeds. Response times, quality, and availability are critical factors that should be assessed before pushing applications https://www.globalcloudteam.com/ into production. One major consideration we mentioned earlier is if you are measuring client-side activity, or more specifically, Web 2.0 technologies. It is very important when it comes time for simulating user actions, like navigating, button clicks, entering date within forms, etc.

Setup a Load Testin Minutes

Modern solutions like Eggplant Monitoring Insights allow teams to take advantage of the latest advances in monitoring technology, such as configurable alerts sent via Webhooks. It’s also vital to be able to actually measure the impact on each component and the end user experience of peak load conditions. For an end user, a slow response could manifest itself in a page that takes a few seconds longer than normal to load; or it could mean that vital components don’t load at all, causing a frustrating or confusing user experience.

• These tools mimic the actions of many simultaneous users, enabling the observation of system response times, the discovery of bottlenecks, and the assurance of real-world usability.
• To simplify the process, you can record the scenarios and then edit them for accuracy.
• During performance testing, you’re looking to meet or exceed a number of industry-defined benchmarks.
• There are multiple types of tests that fall under the performance testing umbrella.
• In simple words, load testing can be considered the simplest form of performance testing.
• Load testing helps to find out the maximum amount of load an application can withstand.

Close monitoring is necessary for ensuring the performance of a system or application. Due to the importance of finding the bugs and defects the stress testing is helping to discover, it is important to perform what is a load test this test and ensure there are no security and user data leaks issues. Stress Testing’s purpose is to examine the behavior of the system when there is an extreme load that is over the breaking point.

Test case development

This enables identifying and fixing problems early on lowering the costs of corrections and avoiding last-minute delays. ‘Classic’ load Testing typically tests the system to verify that it can provide certain response times for a certain volume of users. Quite often, we use load testing as a means to measure, monitor, or even observe performance metrics and other characteristics of a system under test.

Identify the ideal average number of users that might simultaneously use the product and then identify the maximum number of simultaneous users during a heavy stress event. The performance testing life cycle describes the process of arriving at one or more of a series of tests that should be performed for measuring metrics of an application over time. In other words, stress tests help you determine how a system would behave under an extreme load, such as a DDoS attack, Slashdot effect, or other scenarios. The goal is more to determine a maximum limit than to identify bottlenecks. The specifics of a load test plan or script will generally vary across organizations.

Key points to consider when selecting a load testing tool

He goes onto suggest that you can also kick off your API load testing with your API production logs as a way to replay your most realistic use cases. Between these two examples, you should be able to recognize not only what kind of traffic is typical, but also which endpoints are creating this traffic. When conducting a load test, it is crucial to have a dedicated testing environment that mirrors the production environment as closely as possible. In cases where third-party applications are involved, these can be replaced with stubs for testing purposes. Tools such as Puppet and Docker can assist in setting up and managing the testing environment​.

This performance analysis process preps your system to be ready when it comes to real-world handling. If you launch your software without testing it beforehand, you’ll likely have missed a lot of issues. What’s worse, is that users are the ones who’ll find these issues , leaving a bad first impression and tarnishing your application’s reputation. Load testing is the process of checking the behavior of the system under test under the anticipated load. For example, the piece of software under test is designed to serve X users (because it is an internal product of an enterprise and there are no more employees), so it does not make sense to conduct testing under a higher load. Therefore, it is sufficient to check if the performance is good enough and matches non-functional requirements or service level agreements.

Types of Testing

Therefore, the main way to differentiate between these two types of testing is by focusing on their end goal. You write Locust test scenarios in Python code, allowing for some powerful configuration that’s convenient for those already familiar with the language. Ab (also known as ApacheBench) is a simple, single-threaded command line tool for benchmarking an HTTP server. Though it was originally distributed as part of the Apache HTTP Server, you may use ab to test any HTTP or HTTPS server.

The success criterion of load testing is based on the completion of all the test cases without any errors and within the allotted time frame. Both load and performance testing are used to analyze software by subjecting it to varying amounts of load while tracking the performance under different load conditions. Due to the range of systems and components that need to be measured, it is important to have the ability to accurately monitor and report your key metrics.

When Should You Use Enterprise vs. Free Load Test Tools?

If you consider specific industries that depend on high-volume transactions, like financial services or large online retailers, the impact could likely be more significant. Also indicated in their survey were the effects on customers and visitors, such as a decline in customer confidence, tarnished brand integrity, drop in stock price. So, as you can see, the importance of ensuring your applications is tested to meet performance demands cannot be overstated. Poor performing sites and applications can have a negative impact on conversions, transactions, and most importantly, revenue. Even a few seconds of downtime can significantly impact a company’s bottom line. A recent survey conducted by Veeam, a global leader in the backup and data management space, with over 1,500 IT professionals found that the cost of one hour of downtime for high priority applications was over $84,000.

Load testing is important because it identifies points of failure in your system and can also show you how your site degrades as more simultaneous users are added. If you know what your peak traffic should be, load testing gives you greater insight into how your web app or site will perform once that level of traffic is reached. Often, load testing is performed right before the release of a new product, a new campaign, a major event, or a system update. Since the goal of load testing is ensuring the website infrastructure can handle an expected number of users, this may not give you enough time for responding to load testing results. Today’s applications are built with multiple technologies, relying on vast networks of third-party providers and CDNs.

How to do Load Testing

Since there are a large number of tests, sometimes confusion comes up between various tests and it’s hard to put a finger on the differences between them. Two test types that cause common confusion between them are Load Testing and Stress Testing. Although both tests are related to Performance
Testing, there are several differences that will help you distinguish between these two valuable tests. While enterprise testing tools offer multiple benefits over other types, they also contain some potential limitations.