As a software developer, you want to give your users a great experience with your application. You can use one or more of the free performance testing tools listed here to measure the performance of your products and identify how to improve them.
Application developers understand more than anyone the difficulty of testing applications in a production environment. To help alleviate some of that difficulty, we have put together a series of performance testing tools to allow you to quickly and easily test your applications. Accept no substitutes!
LAN Tornado
This is an easy to use and low-cost network Performance testing tool. This lets the user generate network traffic for TCP/IP and Ethernet-based networks. This supports network performance testing, network device testing, network stress testing and server applications robustness testing.
AggreGate By Tibbo Solutions
This tool supports monitoring almost all types of IT needs like network monitoring, Server monitoring, router/switch monitoring, performance monitoring, traffic monitoring, SNMP management, network management framework and much more.
It also supports integration with other AggreGate products which provides this tool the benefit of additional features.
Perfsonar
This tool also helps in monitoring network performance. This lets a user know details about bulk data transfer, how the network responds to video and audio streaming.
There are 1000’s of Perfsonar instances are deployed worldwide, some of them are available for open testing. Its global infrastructure makes this tool different from other tools and makes it easy to use for network users.
WinMTR
This is a free network diagnostic tool, easy to run since this doesn’t require installation. This uses the Ping and traceroute commands to test traffic between a computer and host.
WebLOAD
WebLOAD, like other performance testing tools, isn’t strictly a network performance tool. As its aptly named moniker implies, its designers created it specifically to test the performance and scalability of web and mobile applications.
Created by Radview, WebLOAD offers an analytics dashboard that provides insight into Javascript performance and server-side performance. And like most other performance testing tools, WebLOAD has a free trial that supports up to 50 virtual users.
Pros:
- A highly visual widget-based interface makes it easy to see key insights
- Supports both web and mobile application testing
- Fully feature trial supporting up to 50 users
- Supports both Windows and Linux operating systems
Cons:
- Could use more self-help documentation
- Would like to see more example of scripting or a few samples of premade scripts
The free trial is full-featured too; full-featured trials may not be the norm, but are becoming more and more popular. Supported technologies include HTTP/HTTPS, HTML5, AJAX, SOAP, and more. The free edition runs on both Windows and Linux platforms and integrates with Dynatrace, AppDynamics, and New Relic.
SmartMeter.io
SmartMeter.io offers distributed load testing by creating masses of virtual users with software generators to simulate high demand. In addition to real-time analysis, it translates data into graphs to make it easier to spot trends and the results of tests.
We especially like that it has a feature that simulates mobile browsers. Additionally, we like its logging feature to record and display individual HTTP requests and responses so you can comb through HTTP data with the granularity of a packet capture. We were pleased to see that it is significantly more inexpensive than most competitors and that even the Personal version – which is the most basic version – allows 500 virtual users and an unlimited number of tests.
Pros:
- Simulates mobile browsers, great for mobile-focused websites and services
- Supports logging for offline analysis
- Competitively priced, a good option for smaller businesses and home labs
- Supports packet capture for manual review of traffic
Cons:
- The interface could use improvement, empty space could be used for usage monitoring, etc
- Would like to see more frequent updates
- Could use more integrations into Application Performance Monitoring platforms
We were, however, disappointed to discover that SmartMeter.io does not issue refunds. According to their refund policy, they will not offer refunds because it is not a tangible good. We suppose the lack of an adequate refund policy is justified by its low cost. Nevertheless, it has a free trial that allows you to test the waters before taking the plunge.
Grinder
Grinder is a free Java-based load testing framework which is available under open source license. The developer of this tool is Paco Gomez and it is maintained by Philip Aston. It has gone many improvements over the years. It is easy to run and create distributed testing solutions with the use of load injector machines. It consists of Grinder console and Grinder agents.
Features of Grinder
- TCP proxy
- Distributed testing that is scalable with agent instances
- Powered by Python or Closure with Java API
- It can support multiple protocols
- Flexible parameterization to create test data
- It enables post-processing and assertion and also access to test results for verification
Gatling
Gatling is a stress tool which is built on Scala, Akka and Netty. It is one of the free and open source performance testing tools which is developed and maintained by Stephane Landelle. It consists of a basic GUI to test recorder. This tool consists of Domain-specific language which is easy to read and write tests development.
Features of Gatling
- Powerful and simple DSL
- Multi-threaded
- Extendable
- HTTP recorder
- Multiple input sources
- Understandable load reports
- Asynchronous and non-blocking approach
- Flexible validation assertions system
Tsung
Tsung is a non-Java-based open source tool to test the performance. It was previously known as IDX-Tsunami. It was launched by Nicolas Niclausse in 2001. It provides a complete testing solution with the help of protocols like web sockets, databases and authentication systems.
Features of Tsnug
- HTTP recorder
- HTML reports and graphs
- Distributed design
- Multiple protocol support.
- Able to monitor CPU of client, memory and network traffic
- Data-driven testing
- Flexible load scenarios
Locust
Locust is a Python-based framework which allows you to write scripts in Python language. This tool is very simple to use and you can monitor swarming process from web UI. It is targeted for web applications and web-based services. Using this framework you can test all sorts of performance tests. It has a different approach which is based on events and g-event co-routine. It stimulates many users and executes complex scenarios.
Features of Locust
- Web-based UI which is user-friendly
- Cross-platform
- Creation of test scenarios using Python language
- Scalable
- Easy API testing
- Web-based load monitoring
- Code based scripts
- Power assertion ability
Conclusion
WebPageTest is a free tool offered by Google to objectively analyze the performance of websites at any location around the world. It relies on popular open source tools such as ApacheBench, httperf, and JMeter for collecting performance data.