Need a performance testing tool? We have short listed best load testing tools to perform automated testing. Load testing is a important part of measuring performance
When we talk about performance testing tools, there are many available on the internet. Many of them are open source and many of them are paid. It is necessary for you to know every tool so that you can use them as per your requirement.
This article features some of the most widely used performance testing tools that you can use to measure load stress capacity and web application performance. This article includes both open source and licensed performance testing tools.
Apache JMeter
This is a 100% pure Java open source application, which is designed to measure performance as well as load test functional behavior. It can be used on both dynamic and static resources and web dynamic languages.
Grinder
It is a load testing framework that runs on Java platform. This framework is easy to run a distributed test that can be done by using various load injector machines. It is available under BSD-style open-source license and is available for free.
Gatling
It is an open source load testing framework that is built based on Netty, Akka and Scala. It is a high-performance framework that offers ready-to-present HTTP reports. It offers scenario recorder and developer-friendly DSL.
Tsung
This is an open source load testing tool that runs on multiple protocols. It is a free software that is released under GPLv2 license. It can be used to stress WebDAV, HTTP, MySQL, LDAP and many other servers.
LoadRunner
This is a very common load testing tool, which gives you the perfect picture pertaining to end-to-end system performance. It is used to identify and rectify the issues prior to the application go live.
WebLOAD
When it comes to complicated process of performance testing WebLOAD is the name that makes the task easier. This is a flexible tool that builds load scenarios with any required logic and integration.
Appvance
When you are using Appvance you can be rest assured that you are with the technology leader in the segment. The drive response time for this tool is 500ms, which is faster than any other tool.
NeoLoad
This load testing software solution is designed to be used in both mobile as well as web applications. This is used to monitor infrastructure behavior and simulate the user activity in realistic manner.
LoadUI
This load tester enables the users to interactively redistribute, configure and create their load tests. This tester offers complete test coverage in a single test environment and it also supports all standard technologies and protocols.
WAPT
If you are looking for a cost-effective and easy-to-use stress and load testing tool there cannot be a better one than WAPT. It can test any website including mobile sites, business applications and web portals.
Loadster
This is the application whose aim to offer load testing for the users from anywhere. It is a fully featured load testing solution that can be used for web services, web apps and websites. It can handle cookies effortlessly and is built for real web apps.
LoadImpact
This is an on-demand and automated performance testing tool for DevOps. Whether it is API or mobile app or web app or website – this tool is equally effective for testing any protocol.
Rational Performance Tester
It is a load testing tool from IBM that offers code-free testing for the test data. It also offers root cause analysis tool along with real time reporting. It offers quick performance tests and analyzes impact of the load on your application.
Testing Anywhere
It is all-in-one easy-to-maintain automation testing software. This is scriptless single piece software that enables endless testing possibilities. It is built on patented SMART Automation Technology that brings built-in intelligence to testing.
OpenSTA
This distributed software testing framework is built around COBRA. The latest toolset is designed to perform heavy load tests for scripted HTTP and HTTPS along with measurement of performance from Win32 platforms.
QEngine (ManageEngine)
It is a QEngine of Product End of Life Cycle announced by ManageEngine but is not available to purchase or active support. It offers services like Real Browser Monitor, HTTP URL Monitor and J2EE Web Transaction Monitor.
Loadstorm
This is a cost-effective and easy load testing tool that can be used for both mobile and web applications. This tool help you know the breaking points of your applications.
CloudTest
The best tool for faster load testing. This is a cloud based load testing tool. This tool fast tracks your load testing scenario and it performs with speed that is scalable and affordable.
Httperf
This tool can be used for measuring the performance of web server. It offers flexible facilities to generate different HTTP workloads and server performance measurement. It offers high performance and robust testing service.
LoadComplete
This is a desktop tool used for load testing of web applications along with their scalability, stress and performance. It works with both Rich Internet Application and HTML websites and uses modern web technologies like ASP.NET, AJAX, Flex, Flash etc.
Loader
This is a free and cloud-based load testing service, which offers tests of stress and load for your web apps and apps that have thousands of concurrent connections. It gives the output as stats and graphs.
Allmon
This is a system that collects and stores metrics that is used for monitoring the performance and availability along with quality, health and responses of the application. It also offers some data mining algorithms that is useful for further performance analysis.
Databene Benerator
It is a framework that supports in performing performance and load tests in real-time scenarios. It helps in generating high-volume realistic tests data for your system that is undergoing test.
CLIF
This is an open source load testing platform that includes load injector for generating traffic and probes for measuring the usage of the resources like network, memory and processor.
ContiPerf 2
This is a light weight testing tool that enables users to leverage JUnit 4 test cases as performance tests easily. It uses Java annotations to define the test execution characteristics.
Curl-loader
This is an open source testing tool that is written on C language. It simulates application load and behavior of tens and thousands of FTP/FTPS and HTTP/HTTPS clients with their own source IP address.
Linux Test Project
This is a test project that is started by Bull, OSDL and SGI developed and maintained by Cisco, IBM, Oracle, Red Hat, SUSE, Fujitsu and many others. The aim is to deliver tests to the open source community.
DBMonster
This is a testing tool that randomly generates test data and places the same into the SQL database. It also helps in testing the capability of the application to deal with large database.
Dieseltest
This is an easy-to-use load testing tool that can be used to simulate hundreds or thousands of users on websites. This load tester has the ability to record the scripts and play them back again to show the results real time
FunkLoad
Like its name this is a functional and load testing tool written in Python script using the pyUnit framework. It enables functional testing of web projects and also regression testing.
FWPTT
This is a web application testing tool that is used for testing the loads on web applications. It has the capability of recording normal as well as AJAX requests and it also works with PHP, JSP and others.
GrinderStone
This is an Eclipse plug-in used to develop Grinder load testing scripts including support for debugging. It has the ability to create separate running configurations and is compatible with all latest versions of PyDev.
HammerDB
It is an open source benchmarking and load testing tool that can be used for variety of servers like SQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, TimesTen, MySQL and many others. Fully automated functionality and advanced command-line is available in Autohammer extension.
Http_load
It tests the throughput of a web server by running multiple HTTP fetches in parallel. It runs in a single process, which is unlikely for other applications. Hence there is no chance of bogging down client machine.
Iperf
It is a modern alternative that can be used for measuring maximum UDP and TCP bandwidth performance and it allows tuning of different UDP characteristics and parameters. It has the capability to report bandwidth, datagram loss and delay jitter.
IxoraRMS
If you want to visualize and gather the monitoring data IxoraRMS is the tool that you can use. It has a Swing GUI and is developed under Java platform. It is an open source platform released on Apache License.
J-Hawk
This is a performance testing tool and is a Java based open source framework. This tool can execute the module in two ways – property mode and script mode. The scripting language is developed in a easy-to-learn method for the developers.
JChav
This is a method to see the changes in performance of the web applications that you are using over time. It does so by running a benchmark test for every build produced by you. This tool is available under Apache License.
JCrawler
This is an open source tool that is used for testing the stress for your web applications. This is named as Crawler because of its crawling or exploratory feature. The load parameters in this tool are configurable.
MessAdmin
It is a non-intrusive and light-weight tool that is used for monitoring the interaction with Java HTTP session. It can easily be attached to any Java EE application that too with no changes to the monitored application.
Mstone
This is a multi-protocol performance and stress testing tool that has the capacity to simultaneously test multiple protocols like SMTP, POP etc. along with the performance measurement of every transaction.
Multi-Mechanize
This is an open source framework based on Python script, which is used for load and performance testing. It can run on concurrent Python scripts to generate load against a remote service or a site.
NGrinder
This is a stress testing platform that also has the capacity to simultaneously execute various functions like test execution, script creation, monitoring and generating result report. It provides integrated environments and eliminates inconveniences making it easy for running the test.
OpenSTA
It is a software testing architecture that is available in distributed mode. This is designed around COBRA. It offers the modern tool sets that have the ability to perform scripted HTP and HTTPS heavy load tests.
OpenWebLoad
This is a tool that is used for testing load and stress on web applications. It offers near real time performance measurements of the applications that are under test. This tool is useful when you are doing some optimization of your tools.
Ostinato
It is a cross-platform network packet crafter or traffic generator and analyzer with friendly GUI. It is an open source system that can craft and send packets of many streams with various protocols at different rates.
P-unit
It is an open source framework that can be used for performance benchmark and unit tests. It can run same tests with single as well as multi threads. It also has the capability to track memory and time consumption along with generating reports in text, image or PDF format.
Postal
This program is written with the aim to benchmark SMTP servers. The aim of writing this program was to see which server can give the best result with more than 1,000,000 users at a time.
Pylot
It is a free and open source tool that is used for testing scalability and performance of web services. It runs HTTP tests that are useful to test the load for capacity planning, analysis, system tuning and benchmarking.
Raw Load Tester
It is an open source free tool that is used for testing the load on websites. Though it does not have many features it can be useful where there is a need to use a more comprehensive load testing tool.
Seagull
It is an open source multi-protocol traffic generator tool used for testing. This tool was primarily aimed at IMS protocols but ultimately has become a powerful tool for traffic generation.
JoeDog Software
This is a tool to generate traffic. The JoeDog software is a useful tool that helps you generate traffic through blogs rather than any other aspects of the website. This is basically open source software.
SIPp
This is a free open source test tool or traffic generator that is used for SIP protocol. This tool has UAS and UAC that are basic SipStone user agent scenarios. It also has the ability to read custom XML scenarios.
Soap-Stone
This is a network benchmark application that conducts automatic recording and benchmark activities by placing your network under load. This tool is delivered to you as a single Java JAR archive.
Stress Driver
It is a general purpose strexs test tool for testing the loads on your website. This is not a free open source tool and is available under license distribution. This effective tool is best for your business website.
PushToTest:
This open source test tool surfaces any type of functional issues and performance bottlenecks. You can build and test web, AJAX, BPM and SOA applications in a cloud or grid environment.
TPTEST
The aim of this tool is to offer the users to measure the speed of their internet connection in a simple and easy possible way. It offers measurement of the throughput speed to and from many reference servers over the internet.
Valgrind
This is an instrumentation framework that can be used for making dynamic analysis tools. There are many Valgrind tools that have the capability to detect many memory management and threading bugs automatically.
LoadSim
It is load simulator for web application that allows you to create simulations and run them against your web servers. This web simulator is fairly complex and offers you the accurate information
Web Polygraph
This is a performance testing tool that is available freely. This testing tool is useful for caching proxies, test the origin server accelerators, content filters, L4/7 switches and many other web intermediaries.
WebLOAD
WebLOAD: This a testing tool that can create tests in easy fashion with intuitive record and playback controls. This tool enables user to easily turn the recorded script into an execution-ready test with the help of automatic identification.
Bees With Machine Guns
This is an utility that can help you creating many bees or micro EC2 instances that can load test the web applications. This has the dependencies towards Python 2.6, Boto and Paramiko.
Ab – Apache
This is a benchmarking tool for your Apache HTTP server. This tool is designed in such a way that it can give you impression on how is the performance of your current Apache installation.
Now that you have a fair idea of the performance testing tools available on the net, it is up to you to take the decision of choosing the one that is suitable for your requirement. Some offer the standard testing tools while some others provide you premium features, but at a price. Start using them to test the performance of your websites and web servers