What is Load Testing & Performance Testing?
Load testing measures how a system performs under expected and peak traffic conditions.
Load testing measures how a system performs under expected and peak traffic conditions. It identifies performance bottlenecks, memory leaks, and scalability limits before they affect real users.
Types: Load testing (expected traffic volume), Stress testing (beyond expected capacity — find the breaking point), Spike testing (sudden traffic surge), Soak testing (sustained load over hours — find memory leaks), and Chaos testing (failure injection under load).
Tools: k6 (Grafana, modern, JavaScript-based), Locust (Python-based, distributed), JMeter (Java-based, GUI-heavy), and Gatling (Scala-based, CI/CD friendly). Key metrics: response time (p50, p95, p99), throughput (requests/second), error rate, and resource utilization (CPU, memory, connections).
Why It Matters
Production performance issues are the most expensive bugs to fix (require immediate response, affect all users, damage reputation). Load testing finds them in staging — where they're cheap to fix — instead of production where they're a crisis.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is load testing?
Testing how a system performs under expected and peak traffic. Identifies bottlenecks, memory leaks, and scalability limits before they affect real users. Run in staging, not production.
Which load testing tool should I use?
k6 for modern teams (JavaScript, CI/CD friendly, open-source). Locust for Python teams. JMeter for complex scenarios (enterprise, legacy). Start with k6 if you don't have a preference.
Related Terms
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