Here is a list of some of the best free performance testing tools – free as in the price – but these tools will not come for free to you, they’ll cost your business a lot, if you run them against your site and nothing is done about it.
Finding the right performance testing tool can be a challenge. In this post, we summarize top free performance testing tools, and assigned them assigned a “Best Fit” rating.
Fortio
Fortio is a cool load testing library, command-line tool, advanced echo server and web UI in go (golang).
This tool allows to specify a set query-per-second load and record latency histograms and other useful stats.
Pros
- It’s fast
- Small footprint (3Mb docker image, minimal dependencies)
- Reusable
- Embeddable go library
- Can tecord latency histograms and other useful stats.
It currently has 1.8k stars on GitHub.
puppeteer-webperf
With most modern applications using javascript heavy front-ends the needs for client-side performance measurements have never been greater.
Don’t ignore front-end performance.
You can use Puppeteer WebPerf to collect web performance stats like a trace for a page load, grab a dev tools trace with screenshots, get runtime performance metrics, and a bunch more.
It currently has 1.4k stars on GitHub.
Flood Element
Want to test real browser load?
Flood created this open-source solution to help specifically with mimicking user behaviors using real browser load testing.
Element is an open-source Playwright that uses a browser-based load testing tool.
Scripts are created using Typescript.
You can use it against your Web app in the same way that your customers do, opening a browser and interacting with page elements.
This approach can help find user-facing performance issues.
It’s written like a functional test script, but with the help of Flood, you can quickly run load testing scripts on as many nodes as you want in the Cloud.
One of the few open-source tools that allow you to create performance testing using real browsers to more closely mimic how real users interact with your application.
It currently has 204 stars on GitHub.
Artillery.io
Artillery.io is an open-source application with an opt-in of premium services to create load tests to simulate load to emulate thousands of users.
It has detailed performance metrics including:
- latency
- requests per second
- concurrency
- capture average response time
- and throughput.
Peak performance testing to handle maximum traffic for your back-end application for stability and reliability.
It has the ability to write custom logic, post, and pretest scenarios using JavaScript, which has a wide variety of NPM modules that you can use.
It supports multiple protocols, including HTTP, Web Socket, Socket.IO, Kinesis, and HLS.
It currently has 4,397 stars on GitHub.
CloudTest:
Tool Overview: This tool helps to stress test environment to ensure the website or an application is stable even under the spikes or in heavy traffic. It generates actionable insights that help dive into the live data and effectively know any performance issues while load testing is in progress. It enables continuous testing process in the cloud (anytime without worrying about any hardware), eliminates traditional costs and gives more value to it.
NeoLoad
This industry-leading performance and load testing tool are designed to automate test design, analysis, and maintenance of web and mobile apps. NeoLoad is easy to integrate with CD pipelines and emulates traffic via virtual users. It facilitates the assessment of app performance and transaction response times under specific load. It pinpoints the number of users which the mobile app or internet can support.
Key Capabilities
- Automates test design with 10X faster test creation
- Supports continuous integration servers to automate test runtime
- On-premises and hybrid cloud load generation from 70+ global localizations
- Compatible with Jenkins, Bamboo & TeamCity
- Shares test reports and scripts in real-time at a specific stage and also at the end of the testing through software or on-premise web interface
LoadView
Another extensively popular platform, LoadView, is on-demand stress and load testing tool. But what makes it unique is its ability to conduct tests in real browsers. The outcome is a near-perfect emulation of accurate data and real-time users. This tool is cloud-based and hence can be easily deployed in minutes. LoadView facilitates the creation of multiple-step scripts emulating every interaction in your website or mobile app. You can easily track the performance of your applications under a specific load. It uses actual browser-based load tests for websites, apps and APIs.
Key Capabilities
- Creates multiple-step scripts easily
- Can edit scripts manually using your C# code
- Allows fast and easy formation of test scripts without coding
- Supports advanced load testing features such as global cloud-based infrastructure and point & click scripting
- Identifies bottlenecks and generates performance reports
- Compatible with Java, HTML5, PHMP, Flash, Silverlight & Ruby
- Supported by Google Cloud Platform & AWS
- Can efficiently test series of desktop devices, mobiles and browsers
StormForge
This tool offers fast and reliable performance testing as a service. This is the only testing tool that combines performance testing with machine learning optimization. It enables you to assess the performance of apps and identify ideal configurations for resource utilization. StormForge can be used for load testing apps at scale before release. You can create tests in an instant and scale thousands of requests per second. It can support millions of concurrent users and easily creates automated load tests. Easy to integrate into your CI/CD pipeline efficiently captures real production traffic and reflects actual patterns.
Key Capabilities
- Ensures reliability and performance before release
- Reduces risk and facilitates release with confidence by testing real-world scenarios
- Enhances user experience by providing optimal performance to meet SLAs while minimizing business-impacting issues
- It helps reduce cloud waste and lowers cloud bills by boosting performance
Conclusion
Here is a list of the best free web performance testing tools. This list includes both network-based and client-based web performance testing tools. I hope this list saves you time researching the best free tools.