Open Source Performance Testing Tools for Beginners

What are the best open source load testing tools for beginners? Great question. Most of the beginner level open source load testing tools are more of a learning curve than not, but there is one that rises above the rest. If you are looking for performance testing software for beginners, you can’t go wrong with JMeter.

Performance testing tools are essential for both the developer and the company they work for. The performance of an application is its capacity to perform in a timely manner in relation to the tasks it has been designed to execute. Without the right performance testing tools in place, you can’t be sure that your application will run smoothly at scale.

JMeter

JMeter is one of the most popular performance testing tools in the market. It’s flexibility and online community support makes it an automatic choice over many of the paid tools also.
It can be used for performance testing of all kinds of applications ranging from – Web applications, web services, database, LDAP, shell scripts, etc.
Beginners may feel a little difficult to understand at first but once they get hold of this tool, it is very powerful and flexible. For JMeter tutorials refer to our Apache JMeter tutorials.
JMeter also distributed load testing features wherein one can create a master-slave setup for carrying out a load test on multiple devices.
Scripting is minimal in JMeter, it provides record and play option along with drag and drops feature. But it requires knowledge of regular expressions, web architecture, session variables, cookies, etc. for creating JMeter scripts.
Download Link – Apache JMeter Official Site.

The Grinder

The Grinder is a Java load testing framework.
It can be used to load test web applications, SOAP and REST Web services.
It requires scripting in Jython and Clojure languages.
After JMeter, it is one of the most widely used open-source performance testing tools because of its flexible scripting and distributed framework.

Gatling

Gatling is a performance testing tool based on frameworks like Scala, Akka, and Netty.
Like JMeter, it also provides a scenario recording feature.
Scripting is done in the popular scala language.
It’s load test reports are very comprehensive and presentable.

Load UI Pro

LoadUI Pro by Smartbear lets you instantly generate script-less complicated load tests, publish them on the cloud utilizing load agents and control server’s performance on increasing the load on them.
Enables reuse of subsisting SoapUI Pro functional tests.
Preconfigured test templates such as baseline, spike, stress, and smoke.

12. Httperf

An open Source HTTP load generator for regulating web server performance promoting the construction of both micro and macro- level benchmarks.
Creates and maintains server overloads.
Tests standard HTTP payload of the application.

13. Gatling

Open-source framework created using Scala, Akka&Netty.
Creates precise results that can be observed progressively and can be exported later for review.
Drastically diminishes the debugging time period.

14. WAPT

An affordable, simple-to-use stress and load testing tool.
Can test any website comprising of mobile sites, web portals, and business applications.

JCrawler

JCrawler is an open-source performance testing tool for Web applications.
Unlike other tools, it works on crawling mechanism to find the URLs to be load tested.
It doesn’t require any scripting knowledge to work with JCrawler.
The starting URLs and desired hits/second parameters are configurable.

OpenWebLoad

OpenWebLoad is an open-source load testing tool for Web applications.
It is a command-line tool and doesn’t require any scripting knowledge.
It provides real-time performance of the system under test.

Loadview by Dotcom Monitor

Website: https://www.loadview-testing.com/

Price: From $199/mo, free trial available

Loadview is one of the more complete solutions available in the market and today is based on a cloud service model. This means that whatever type of simulation you need from them, you only pay for the service – there is zero investment in hardware or anything else.

Feature wise, Loadview offers a very complex solution that can include anything from straight up HTTP load tests to a sophisticated mix of your choice. It is able to simulate dynamic variables and even geo-location diversity in its tests.

Tip: Not sure if LoadView is right for you?
Schedule a discovery call (15 minutes) or free demo (1 hour) with LoadView. Their performance engineers will walk you through the scripting and execution process > Schedule a free demo now.

LoadView Features

Post-firewall tests
Handles dynamic variables
Detailed waterfall charts
Load test curves

Visit Loadview

K6 Cloud (formerly Load Impact)

Website: https://k6.io/

Price: From $59/mo

K6 is a cloud-based, open source load testing tool that’s provided as a service. One of the things that makes this tool interesting is that it is priced on a variable-use model which means that the cost of entry can be relatively low depending on your needs. It is, however, mainly developer-centric.

Aside from load testing, K6 also offers performance monitoring. Its load testing side is focused on high loads and can handle various modes such as spikes, stress testing, and endurance runs.

*K6 does not run in browsers nor does it run in NodeJS

K6 Features

Developer-friendly APIs.
Scripting in JavaScript
Performance monitoring

Load Ninja

Website: https://loadninja.com/

Price: From $119.92/mo

Load Ninja lets you load-test with real browsers based on recorded scripts and then helps analyze performance results. Its use of real browsers at scale means that this tool helps recreate a more realistic environment and end result for testing.

Results can be analyzed in real-time and thanks to the handy tools the system provides, your scripting time can be reduced by as much as 60%. Internal applications can be tested as well, both with proxy-based fixed IPs or your own range of dynamic IPs (by using a whitelister).

Load Ninja Features

Test with thousands of real browsers
Diagnose tests in real-time
Insights on internal application performance

LoadRunner by Micro Focus

Website: https://www.microfocus.com/

Price: From $0

With an entry-level free community account that supports tests from 50 virtual users, LoadRunner is available even to the newest website owners. However, if you scale it up to high levels the cost rises exponentially.

This Cloud-based service also offers the use of an Integrated Development Environment for unit tests. It supports a wide range of application environments including Web, Mobile, WebSockets, Citrix, Java, .NET, and much more. Be aware that LoadRUnner can be pretty complex and has a steep learning curve.

MicroFocus Features

Patented auto-correlation engine
Supports 50+ technologies and application environments
Reproduces real business processes with scripts

Loader

Website: https://loader.io/

Price: From $0

Compared to what we’ve shown so far, Loader is a much simpler and more basic tool. Its free plan supports load testing with up to 10,000 virtual users which is enough for most moderate traffic websites.

Unfortunately you will need to have a paid plan to access more advanced features such as advanced analytics, concurrent tests, and priority support. It is easy to use though since basically you just add your site, specify the parameters, then let the test run.

Features

Shareable graphs & stats
Useable in a GUI or API format
Supports DNS Verification and priority loaders.

Taurus

Taurus isn’t so much a load testing platform as a tool for automating test scripts, from JMeter to Selenium. Using the easy-to-understand YAML language, you can quickly build tests and incorporate them into a continuous integration environment. You can use the same YAML language to generate reports and interface with third-party tools.

Here’s an example of a Taurus test script for running a scenario:

“`

execution:

– concurrency: 100

ramp-up: 1m

hold-for: 5m

scenario: quick-test

scenarios:

quick-test:

request:

– http://demosite.com

“`

You can run the scenario by executing the command `bzt quick_test.yml` in a terminal or in a continuous integration environment.

Locust

Locust is an open source load testing tool that lets you define user behaviors in Python and send millions of simultaneous users to your application. With its beautiful user interface, you can easily see key performance metrics, charts, failures, exceptions and other information. The only drawback is that it requires knowledge of the Python programming language.

Locust Load Testing Statistics – Source: Locust

Gatling

Gatling is a developer-focused load testing tool for web applications. Using its JavaScript API, developers can quickly write complex load tests and integrate them into continuous integration and deployment processes. Companies looking for a web-based interface with real-time monitoring can also check out its commercial FrontLine enterprise product.

Gatling scenarios are easy-to-understand for most developers:

“`

var httpProtocol – http

.baseUrl(“”)

.acceptHeader()

.doNotTrackHeader()

.acceptLanguageHeader()

.acceptEncodingHeader()

.userAgentHeader()

var scn = scenario(“BasicSimulation”)

.exec(http(“request_1”)

.get(“/”)

“`

As with Taurus, these tests can be easily executed on the command line or integrated into continuous integration environments.

Bees with Machine Guns

Developed by the Chicago Tribune, this is probably the coolest-sounding performance testing tools on this list.

Bees with Machine Guns describes itself as a utility for arming (creating) many bees (micro Amazon EC2instances) to attack (load test) targets (web applications).

This tool can easily help you load test a site that needs to handle high traffic.

Leverage Amazon EC2

It currently has 6k stars on GitHub.

For enterprise-wide performance testing tools, LoadRunner tends to be one of the most common but many of these open-source tools can get you most of the functionality you need. Also, most of these tools protocols can be used for both performance testing web application and performance testing web services.

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

The Complete Front-End Performance Testing Guide

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.

Also, check out my complete front-end performance testing guide for more info.

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.

Read about it in my post Browser Level Performance Testing Using Element.

It currently has 204 stars on GitHub.

Additional Info

JMeter

The Apache JMeter application is open source software. It is a pure Java application designed to load test an application and measure its performance. Read More »

Gatling

Gatling is a highly capable load testing tool. It is designed for ease of use, maintainability and high performance. Read More »

Locust

Locust is an easy-to-use, distributed, user load testing tool. It is intended for load-testing websites (or other systems) and figuring out how many concurrent users a system can handle. Read More »

Tsung

Tsung is an open-source multi-protocol distributed load testing tool. It can be used to stress HTTP, WebDAV, SOAP, PostgreSQL, MySQL, LDAP, MQTT, and Jabber/XMPP servers. Read More »

Siege

Siege is an HTTP load testing and benchmarking utility. Siege supports basic authentication, cookies, HTTP, HTTPS and FTP protocols. It lets its user hit a server with a configurable number of simulated clients. Read More »

Httperf

Httperf is a tool for measuring web server performance. It provides a flexible facility for generating various HTTP workloads and for measuring server performance. Read More »