Performance testing tools allow you to put your application under real-world load to determine if your system can handle the unexpected spikes in traffic. Performance testing is an essential part of the overall software development process.
In this review, we shall be looking at some of these tools.
WebLOAD
This is an enterprise-scale load testing tool that can generate real-life and reliable load scenarios, even in most complex systems. Its smart analytics provide in-depth performance insights. The tool comes with built-in support for hundreds of technologies. It also integrates with several tools to support simpler monitoring.
The key features of this performance testing tool are as follows:
- It is available on the Cloud or as an on-premise deployment
- Readily extensible and supports all the major web technologies
- Creates a flexible test environment
- Native JavaScript based on smart scripting with validation engines, parameterization, and powerful correlation
- Detects bottlenecks automatically
WebLOAD is widely used by performance testing services with complex and heavy user load requirements. You can conduct stress and load testing on any web-based software by creating load from on-premise systems and the Cloud. It supports technologies including enterprise applications to web protocols. It supports integration with tools like Selenium, Jenkins, and many others to allow continuous load testing for DevOps.
LoadNinja
LoadNinja allows you to build scriptless load tests. It is preferred by performance testing services because it helps reduce testing times by half. Other advantages include replacing load emulators with real browsers and generating actionable metrics.
This tool allows you to debug in the real-time, record client-side interactions, identify performance issues instantly, and do much more. LoadNinja allows you to boost your testing coverage without compromising on quality. It removes cumbersome, repetitive tasks involved in script translation, dynamic correlation, and script scrubbing. It allows you to spend more time in developing scalable applications and less time on creating load testing scripts.
The key features of LoadNinja are as follows:
- Real browser load testing at scale
- Create a scriptless load test and playback feature
- Real-time management of virtual user activity
- Real-time test debugging
- Advanced browser-based metrics with reporting and analytics features
- Cloud-based hosting eliminates maintenance of the server
LoadNinja supports the following protocols:
- HTTPS
- HTTP
- Java-based protocol
- SAP GUI Web
- Google Web Toolkit
- WebSocket
- Oracle Forms
3. LoadView
LoadView is also widely popular with performance testing services. This is an on-demand and fully-managed load testing and stress testing tool. It is different from most other load testing tools in that testing is conducted in real browsers. The result is close emulation of real users and highly accurate data. It is fully cloud-based and is readily deployed in minutes. It allows creating multi-step scripts simulating user interaction with your application or website.
Some of the key features of LoadView are as follows:
- Supports advanced load testing features like global Cloud-based infrastructure, point and click scripting, and real browser testing
- Allows instant and easy creation of test scripts without the need for coding
- Supports Rich Internet Applications including Java, Flash, HTML5, Ruby, Silverlight, and PHMP among others
- Over a dozen global Cloud locations supported by Google Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Services
- Test compatibility with dozens of desktop and mobile devices and browsers
- Easy to share performance metrics and reports
- Identifies bottlenecks and supports scalability
4. StresStimulus
StresStimulus is popular with performance testing services because it is capable of handling scenarios that may be difficult to test using other tools. It works by automatically fixing playback errors using its unique autocorrelation feature. The tool records user actions before replaying them to emulate changing usage patterns. It also keeps track of load impact on the responsiveness of the software and the server infrastructure. It can also detect hidden concurrency errors and provides in-depth performance metrics.
The key features of this performance testing tool are as follows:
- Cloud or on-premise testing using multiple load generators
- End-to-end Test Wizard reduces the learning curve by covering all steps
- Option of manual scripting is available, but not required. The tool supports upto 3 scripting languages.
- Allows script export to Visual Studio test format
- Can be used as a Fiddler add-on or an independent tool
Fiddler with BlackWidow and Watcher
This might seem like an odd combination to have on a performance tool list.
But performance engineering expert Todd DeCapua in a previous PerfGuild conference session recommended using Fiddler with Watcher and BlackWidow to create a quick-start automation testing performance solution.
Fiddler enables you to do many things, but it’s probably best described as a packet capture tool.
While Fiddler may not be considered a load testing solution it does many things that allow you to debug website issues, and with one of its many extensions, you can accomplish even more.
Some things you might want to use Fiddler for:
- Troubleshooting issues with your web application
- Security testing
- Performance evaluations
- Debugging web traffic from most computers and devices
- Many integration features
- Handy for finding performance bottlenecks
- Fiddler is already a pretty popular tool among developers. Many use it for debugging to view the HTTP requests their computer is sending to a service or website.
Watcher is a security add-in for Fiddler which will enable you to get some security results quickly. BlackWidow is a web crawler that gives you the functionality to point it towards a web address and then be able to drill down on results.
For someone who’s just getting started in performance engineering, these three tools working together can provide a great way to get that free look and feel as well as results that one might not otherwise be able to obtain quickly.
Todd actually has a session during a past PerfGuild Online Conference where he gives a demo of this approach.
nGrinder
nGrinder‘s GitHub page describes it as having been designed to be an enterprise-level performance engineering solution. It was developed to make stress testing easy and to provide a platform that allows you to create, execute, and monitor tests.
Features:
- You can write your tests using Jython or Groovy to create test scenarios and create stress against JVM using multiple agents.
- It can extend tests with customer libraries like jar and py
- Allows you to monitor the state of your performance agents load generation
- Take care of automatically collecting test results from distributed agents after tests
It currently has 1.3k stars on GitHub.
The Grinder
The Grinder is a Java-based framework. It provides you with easy-to-run and -create distributed testing solutions using many load generator machines to capture your end-users response times. So you don’t have to worry about any virtual users restrictions.
- You can perform load testing on any system that has a Java API
- A nice GUI console
- It automatically handles the management of client connections and cookies
Gatling
Gatling is a stress tool built on Scala, Akka, and Netty.
This modern architecture approach it uses allows you to test and measure your application’s end-to-end performance and easily scale up your virtual users.
- It has a simple yet powerful DSL.
- Easy to extend
- If you’re into Scala and the benefits it brings, this is the load testing tool for you.
- It has a scenario recorder
- Allows you to take a shift-left code approach to performance testing
It currently has 5.1k stars on GitHub.
To learn more about Gatling check out the Founder of Gatling Stephane Landelle’s PerfGuildsession on Load Testing Done Right with Gatling.
k6
k6 is a developer-centric, open-source load testing tool for testing the performance of your back-end infrastructure.
You can also use k6 to start including performance testing into your continuous integration pipelines.
k6 is also Modern load testing tools built with Go and JavaScript so it integrates well into most developers’ workflow.
- Clean scripting API
- Provides distributed & Cloud execution
- Cool REST API orchestration ability
It currently has 11.7k stars on GitHub.
Tsung
Tsung is an open-source, multi-protocol distributed load testing tool.
- Can monitor a client’s CPU, memory, and network traffic
- It has an HTTP recorder
- Includes HTML reports and graphs
- Support protocols like HTTP, XMPP, LDAP, etc.
It currently has 2.1k stars on GitHub.
Siege
Siege is a command-line HTTP load testing and benchmarking utility. It was designed to help developers measure their code under stress.
- Supports basic authentication, cookies, HTTP, HTTPS and FTP protocols.
- Allows its users hit a server with a configurable number of simulated clients. Those clients place the server “under siege.”
- Great for a simple, brute-force type of testing tool
It currently has 4k stars on GitHub.
JMeter
JMeter is the most popular open-source tool in the performance space to help measure load time.
Apache JMeter describes itself as a Java application that was designed specifically for load testing with the ability to measure application performance and response times.
JMeter was built to pretty much be the open-source alternative to LoadRunner, so you’ll find it has lots of sophisticated features. It’s a thick client Java app that’s largely driven by right clicks. It’s a little weird, but it’s got a lot of power. Also, all the features a professional load tester wants are available on JMeter.
Some features are:
- The ability to performance test a host of technologies using a range of protocols such as Java Objects, Web HTTP/HTTPS, SOAP and Rest Services, FTP, Databases with JDBC
- A nice IDE you can use for recording, building, and debugging your performance tests
- Starting with JMeter 3.1 Groovy is the default programming language
- One of the more popular performance testing tools
- Can configure it to help test mobile performance of mobile apps
It currently has 5.1k stars on GitHub.
Although JMeter is one of the more popular test tools, it does have some shortcomings.
For instance, JMeter can be a bit difficult to scale for a large distributed test; especially if you have to set up a bunch of machines since you have to configure them to talk to each other. There is also a host of orchestrating problems in executing large JMeter tests.
That’s where a tool open sourced by BlazeMeter—Taurus—can help you out.
Taurus
While not technically a load testing tool Taurus acts more like a wrapper on top of other solutions that hides the complexity of running performance tests.
The power of Taurus is that it allows you to write your tests in YAML.
You can actually describe a full-blown script in about ten lines of text, which gives teams the ability to describe their tests in a YAML or JSON file. The YAML is a human, readable, edible approach that enables you to describe a test in a simple text file.
This is a big leap forward from the old days of having to bring up a big, heavy vendor-specific record and scripting tool for load time measuring.
Features
- This should also allow more members of your team to contribute to performance tests. Also, since your test cases are written in YAML the tests are much more readable, making them easier to perform code reviews on.
- Taurus basically fits performance testing into your CI/CD pipeline much more efficiently.
- Taurus provides a sort of abstraction layer on top of JMeter, as well as some other tools like Locust, Gatling, the Grinder and Selenium.
It currently has 1.4k stars on GitHub.
Locust
Locust is a simple-to-use, distributed, user load testing tool that can help you capture response times.
What scripting languages does it use? The best one — Python! 🙂
It is used to helps performance test websites or other applications.
Locust can also help you figure out how many concurrent users a system can handle.
Where tools like jMeter are based upon, a thread-based architecture that consumes a lot of resources. Locust uses an event-based approach that uses fewer resources.
Rahul Solanki a technical leader at BlueConch Technologies mentioned to me that when he compared it with JMeter, the number of resources that Locust occupies was around 70 percent less.
If you’re familiar with the term “load generators,” Locust uses the term “swarm”–as in you can point a swarm of locusts to put a load on your website.
You can define the behavior you want for each of your Locust instances. It also gives you the ability to monitor the swarming process from a web UI in real-time.
Some of the cool key features you get with Locust are:
- The ability to create your test scenarios using straight Python
- You can easily scale the number of users you need to emulate
- It has a nice Web-based UI
- Extensible
- Good for testing APIs
Cons
Since its a newer tool it has far fewer plugins than JMeter
It currently has 15.7k stars on GitHub.
Apache JMeter
JMeter is a popular open source performance testing tool that is designed for load and performance testing. It can be used to analyze and measure the performance of a wide range of software, covering services including networks and servers. It is mostly used as a website load testing tool for different types of web service applications.
JMeter is a Java platform application that can be integrated with the test plan. It also allows you to create a function test plan besides a load test plan. Some of the key features are as follows:
- Supports multiple load injectors that can be managed using a single controller
- Doesn’t require advanced infrastructure for load testing
- Requires lesser scripting efforts relative to other API performance testing tools, as it has a user-friendly interface
- Supports all Java-based applications
- Easy analysis of key load based stats and resource usage monitors by presenting simple graphs and charts
JMeter supports the following protocols – HTTPS, HTTP, XML, Java-based protocols, SOAP, and FTP among others.
SmartMeter.io
SmartMeter.io is the preferred option for performance testing services who want to address the drawbacks of JMeter. The tool supports the creation of a simple scriptless test environment with its Recorder. It provides test reports and has features like automatic test criteria assessment and test runs trend and comparison analysis. The tool offers full support for CI/CD integration. Its key features are as follows:
- Create a scriptless test environment
- Advanced response body extractor
- Real-time results and GUI test runs
- Comprehensive reporting, automatic assessment, and test execution comparisons
- Supports CI/CD integration
The SmartMeter.io supports the following protocols – HTTP, FTP, LDAP, JDBC, JMS, and SOAP. There is no need for browser plugin or proxy setup. It has excellent capabilities in CI integration, distributed testing, and provides unmatched performance testing support when it comes to validating apps.
Rational Performance Tester
Rational Performance Tester from IBM is designed to create and run performance tests. It is also a powerful analysis tool. The tool allows you to verify the stability and scalability of web-based applications before they are deployed. This is an automated performance testing tool that develops a demo of the transaction process between the web service and the user.
It is capable of gathering all the information and analyses them to help improve efficiency. It makes it easy to detect and rectify any leakage in the application or server. Rational Performance Tester is widely used by performance testing services to develop error-free and effective cloud computing service. Some of the key features of this tool are as follows:
- Supports event-based and scheduled testing
- Supports scriptless testing
- Runs with large tests involving multiple users
- Supports real-time reporting that allows instant performance issue identification
- Supports automatic detection and identification of dynamic server response
- Supports automated test data variation
- Runs website load tests with HTML version of web pages opened during test recordings
The performance testing tool supports the following protocols – Web HTTP, Citrix, XML, SOA, Weblogic, Websphere, SOA, and Socket Recording.
Silk Performer
Silk Performer is an enterprise class stress and load testing tool. It is capable of testing application environments along with hundreds and thousands concurrent users. It comes with CloudBurst feature that enables QA teams to efficiently launch any kind of peak load performance test without worrying about complex infrastructure. You can execute tests from over 50 locations globally. It supports Google, AWS, Azure.
Here are the key features of Silk Performer:
- Components -> Workbench, Performance Explorer, and True Log Explorer
- Minimal hardware is required for virtual user simulation
- Simulates modifiable virtual users
- It supports integrated server monitoring
- Supports six models of workloads
- Stress test website with server side diagnostics
Silk Performer supports the following protocols: HTTP/HTML, HTTPS/HTML, HTTP/HTTPS, Flash, Email (SMTP/ POP), FTP, TCP/IP, LDAP, XML/SOAP, .NET and many more.
Gatling
Gatling is a relatively new open-source load testing tool that was created in 2012. It enables you to execute load simulation of concurrent users against the system via JMS, HTTP/S, or JDBC protocols. You can use this tool to simulate web users of a system to identify bottlenecks and optimize them.
It is compatible for all operating systems as it works on Java. Gatling has two executables: one is to record tests and the other one is used to execute them. All the tests are recorded in Scala. After the execution is completed, an immersive and graphical report of the test is generated.
Here are the key features of Gatling:
- It supports any operating system or browser
- Scripting language is Scala and has its own DSL
- Can execute tests in multiple test clouds
- Capable of scaling through Taurus with BlazeMeter or flood.io
Gatling supports the following protocols: HTTP/S, JMS, and JDBC.
SmartMeter.io
SmartMeter is a performance testing and load testing tool that aims at covering up the demerits of JMeter. Additionally, SmartMeter sheds off the load from the tester for manual work and introduces scriptless testing in a smoother and easier way. SmartMeter also supports CI/CD integration and is a great tool for those who love JMeter but hate wasting their time on a few things that it forces them to do manually.
Features:
- SmartMeter helps in creating scriptless test scenario creation.
- Additionally, it also supports CI/CD integrations.
- Familiarizes with JMeter which gives it an edge over other software that needs to learn from scratch.
- Additionally, SmartMeter generates the test reports automatically and performs trend analysis.
- Also, SmartMeter has a good graphical user interface providing real-time results.
LoadRunner
LoadRunner is an excellent tool for testing the application’s performance under load. Additionally, LoadRunner performs load testing by simulating hundreds of thousands of users and recording the performance of the application. Not only this, but LoadRunner also does performance testing by mimicking the real-user behavior. These behaviors may include sending messages between the components, interacting with various interfaces like mouse movements, etc. Originally developed by MicroFocus, Hewlett-Packard acquired LoadRunner in 2006.
Features:
- LoadRunner provides a complete suite of applications within it that best suits enterprise environments.
- Additionally, we can also use LoadRunner through the cloud or as a windows application.
- Not only web applications, but we can also use LoadRunner for performance testing of databases, serverside applications etc.
- Moreover, the distributed cost of computing is lower when we use LoadRunner.
- Also, the report section of LoadRunner is widely appreciated for its detailed reports helping in executing efficient performance testing.
- Additionally, being an old tool, LoadRunner has great community support helping people in every way when they are stuck or want to learn.
Conclusion
Performance testing is a tricky business. Understanding the different types of tests, the performance metrics to be used, how individual components work together to achieve the end goal, and other factors is not easy. That’s why I’ve created this guide to Performance Testing Tools. I’ve put together all the information you need to know about these testing methods and tools in order to make your website faster.