Performance testing tools became an important part of web applications, because that’s how we can find bottlenecks in system performance and allocate more resources to it.
If you want to learn about the different tools available in the market for performance testing, there is a list of best performance testing tools here, which will certainly help you to choose the right tool according to your needs.
StormForge
StormForge offers fast and accurate enterprise-grade Performance-Testing-as-a-Service.
It is the only platform that combines performance testing with machine-learning powered optimization which allows users to both understand the performance and automatically identify the ideal configurations of the application for performance and resource utilization.
Use StormForge to load test your applications for performance and availability at scale before you release them to production. Create load tests in just three minutes and scale from tens to hundreds of thousands of requests per second, and even millions of concurrent users.
Easily create repeatable, automated load tests to incorporate into your CI/CD workflow. Capture actual production traffic to ensure that your load testing reflects actual traffic patterns.
Benefits:
- Shift performance is left to ensure performance and reliability before release.
- Improve user experience by ensuring application performance under load to meet SLAs and minimize business-impacting issues.
- Reduce risk and release with confidence by ensuring deployment success by testing with real-world scenarios before releasing new code into production.
- Build a culture of performance by empowering DevOps teams to build load testing into the CI/CD process to proactively ensure performance and reliability.
- Cut your cloud costs, cloud waste, lower your cloud bills, and improve your performance, guaranteed. StormForge guarantees a minimal reduction of Kubernetes cloud applications.
=> Get Started With StormForge For Free
Keysight’s Eggplant
Keysight’s Eggplant Software is an open, extensible, and multi-protocol performance testing solution. It is designed for new challenges. It performs end-to-end testing and can test anything and everything. It addresses technology glitches.
Eggplant Software provides the benefits of testing faster & efficiently, reducing IT costs, automating repetitive tasks, performing test maintenance at a scale, and reducing time-to-market.
Features:
- Eggplant is simple to use and can perform true, user-centric performance testing.
- It can simulate virtual users at application UI as well as network protocol levels. This feature provides a true understanding of the UX impact at scale.
- It performs intelligent test executions by auto-generating and auto-maintaining test assets.
- It has effective analysis and reporting capabilities.
=> Visit Keysight’s Eggplant Website
Apache JMeter
Open source load testing tool: It is a Java platform application. It is mainly considered as a performance testing tool and it can also be integrated with the test plan. In addition to the load test plan, you can also create a functional test plan.
This tool has the capacity to be loaded into a server or network so as to check on its performance and analyze its working under different conditions. Initially, it was introduced to test web applications, but later its scope had widened.
It is of great use in testing the functional performance of resources such as Servlets, Perl Scripts and JAVA objects. Need JVM 1.4 or higher to run.
System Requirements: It works under Unix and Windows OS
Official Website: Apache JMeter
Apache JMeter is simply one of the best free load testing tools for developers. It is the most popular tool, too, so we’re giving it the first place, and it is beyond dispute. It supports a 100% Java-scripted desktop application and tests functional performance of web applications, as well.
Since Apache JMeter is available in an open-source format, it is highly accessible to software businesses of all sizes. The testing tool is extremely versatile, despite being open-source. It is compatible with several web and networking protocols such as HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, LDAP, SOAP, and TCP. Since the application has a Java-oriented system, it also offers compliance with JDBC and Message-oriented middleware (MOM) through JMS.
The option of using shell scripts and native commands for testing procedures makes it easier to implement.
Lastly, you can use JMeter to test applications for both dynamic and static resources. Therefore, users can utilize resources such as servers, logs, queries, scripts, and files during testing. At the same time, testers can also inspect applications under heavy load and evaluate their robustness and performance against different load types.
Pros
- GUI Design and interface
- Result analysis and caches
- Highly extensible core
- 100% Java-scripted
- Easy-to-use plugin manager
- Multithreading framework
- Data analysis and visualization
- Dynamic input
Cons
- Doesn’t support JavaScript, so it doesn’t support AJAX requests by extension
- After a certain limit, high memory consumption causes errors for a large number of users
- Can be difficult to test complex applications using JavaScript or dynamic content such as CSRF tokens
Protocols
- HTTP
- HTTPS
- XML
- SOAP
- Java-based protocols
- FTP
- JDBC
- LDAP
- POP3, IMAP, SMTP
Pricing
Free or Open Source
Best For
Apache JMeter is one of the best open-source load testing tools for businesses of all sizes. The tool gives its users various useful testing features for free and users can customize it according to their needs.
Locust
Locust is an open-source framework written in Python. It’s easy-to-scale, since its architecture is event-driven. The code on GitHub is open, so the community is growing.
Locust requires at least basic knowledge in the field of programming. Fortunately, the developers have prepared some very detailed documentation with a full description of the framework capabilities, as well as examples of code, tests, preparing Locust for a distributed load, launching via Docker, etc.
Pros
- Detailed documentation that includes templates for quick application
- Python support for your own implementations
- Open source
- Ability to run tests from any OS
- Your own web server
- Distributed load support
- Built-in monitoring system
- Not highly resource-consuming
- No graphical interface, which can be useful if you are going to feed the load from a machine that does not provide access to GUI
Cons
- Python programming skills required
- Support only for the HTTP/HTTPS protocol out of the box
- No built-in script recording capability
Protocols
HTTP/HTTPS protocol, but as the developers assure, you can write your own implementations relative to other protocols. They provide examples of tests for the XML-RPC and gRPC protocols.
Pricing
Free, open-source solution.
Best For
Primarily for those familiar with Python and in a hurry to conduct load testing for their service without having to deal with the specifics of testing on such complex tools as LoadRunner or JMeter. If there are protocols other than HTTP/HTTPS in your project or you are not familiar with Python, it is better to look towards other solutions for load testing.
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.
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.
Conclusion
Performance testing tools are used to load the software’s application and to check its performance. Performance testing tools can check the availability of the application, response time, throughput, scalability, and other parameters.