You need to stress out your software. People like to avoid pressure. But it’s the only way to build resilience. Every great person has overcome great adversity. And every memorable product is one that you subject to professional scrutiny.
Today, we talk about how to turn targeted struggle into an asset. We’ll discuss performance vs load vs stress testing, their distinct benefits, and use cases.
No. The terms are often used interchangeably. That’s just what happens in the IT chaos. And that’s why you may also come across terms like load performance testing or performance load testing. This duo seemed to have amalgamated together. But we need to make sure there’s no confusion. So, let’s get a closer look at what is load and performance testing separately.
Performance testing is an umbrella term. It covers procedures related to checking your app’s operations under various conditions. To determine the exact QA services needed, “performance” was divided into different types of tests.
That’s how the performance vs load testing conundrum came to be. The latter is the most common type. So, the two kind of became synonymous.Let’s stop dragging load testing with us for a bit and focus on the pioneer of software resilience.
The goal of performance testing is to measure overall system behavior in terms of speed, reliability, resource usage, and scalability. The insights you obtain from these tests help you:
Performance testing is typically run after functional testing and before deployment. You should always execute it in environments that closely resemble production. Doing so means carrying out an authentic examination. From it, you can get the most accurate, real-world view of your product.
You should use performance testing:
When you carry out performance testing, you need to pay attention to metrics that let you determine your app’s productivity. There’s quite a lot of them. So, if you don’t feel like going through the complete list, scroll to the end of this section for a summary of the most used and relevant metrics.
The above are metrics used across all performance testing services. We’ll talk about those unique to load testing vs stress testing, too. For now, here’s a brief list of core performance metrics:
Whether your testing is handled by an internal team or a QA company, you ought to make sure they know when to apply what metrics. Sometimes, some of them may be redundant or not needed. And if you use each criterion all the time, you’ll see your money quickly going down without getting much in return.
There’s another thing our QA engineers highlight as exceptionally beneficial. Since performance testing is a mammoth of QA resources, it’s a good idea to add automated software testing services to your development rather soon. They will allow you to cover bigger areas quicker and with much better accuracy.
But don’t be too rash to dismiss manual QA. It’s often time-consuming and somewhat error-prone, yes. Yet, if you’re like our team and treat quality as a deity, then manual testing services are indispensable.
For instance, only they can help you locate obscure issues, which would further refine your app. Consider exploratory performance and ad-hoc testing. Both are impossible with automation, yet they’re arguably most valuable since they give your system a fine polish, adding to user satisfaction.
Overall, before getting to performance testing, assess your crew’s skills. Without good expertise, no insights, tips, or best practices will have a positive impact on your product.
To end the performance testing vs load testing perplexity once and for all, we now move on to the second piece of the puzzle.
Load testing is a type of performance testing. It measures how a system acts under an expected or normal load. The goal is to determine how well your app handles concurrent users or transactions and identify performance issues.
Briefly, load testing checks whether your software can handle the performance it was designed to operate within. That’s why it’s better to use it:
Load testing and performance testing rely on the same metrics. But that doesn’t mean all performance scores are applicable to load tests as well. There are a few that are unique, or rather, most relevant, to load testing.
To sum it all up, comparing load testing vs performance testing is like comparing the functions of the entire body with what a liver does. The organ is a part of the system. It contributes to it. Yes, it has some special roles. But it’s just a segment of something bigger.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what you call performance and load testing. You can even give them cute nicknames if that’s your style. The main thing is that you know how and when to use each. Carrying out performance tests doesn’t always mean running load tests and vice versa.
| Aspect | Load Testing | Performance Testing |
| Definition | Tests how a system performs under expected user loads. | Evaluates the overall performance and responsiveness of a system. |
| Objective | To validate expected behavior and identify the maximum operating capacity. | To assess speed, stability, and resource utilization under various conditions. |
| Focus | Specific to user load and transaction volume. | Broader evaluation of performance metrics. |
| Type of Testing | A subset of performance testing. | Encompasses various types, including load, stress, and endurance testing. |
| Key Metrics | Concurrent users, throughput, request queuing time, and error rates under load. | Response time, throughput, resource utilization, latency, and stability under various conditions. |
| When to Use | Before deploying an application to ensure it can handle expected user load. | Throughout the development lifecycle to ensure performance criteria are met. |
| Outcome | Provides insights into how much load the system can handle before performance degrades. | Offers a holistic view of app performance, helping identify bottlenecks and areas for improvement. |
| Examples | Simulating 5,000 users checking out simultaneously on an e-commerce site. | Measuring how quickly a page loads under various conditions and device types. |
Basically, whether you use load or performance testing depends on your goal and available resources, of course. Performance testing encompasses multiple types of tests. Thus, it needs more effort, diverse skills, and potentially specific infrastructure. Load testing is only one of many performance tests. So, it often requires less work, objectively.
If you want to ensure your app behaves as you want it to under adequate traffic – use load testing. If you want to comprehensively assess your system’s productivity – go with performance testing. But do remember that it includes several kinds of investigations. And you may not need all of them.
Your main task is to determine what you want to check within your product and apply performance testing’s facets based on your needs. That’s precisely why you should fundamentally understand the differences between performance testing and load testing. It’s the only way for you to get the most out of each of them.
Now that we’re done with load vs performance testing, it’s to introduce another rascal to the mix. Why would we do that? To guarantee each type’s maximized value for you. The better you know something, the more you can get out of it.
Stress testing is another child of performance testing. It investigates how a system behaves under extreme or excessive load conditions. In other words, it goes outside of what your app considers “normal traffic.”
By pushing the system to its limits, stress testing reveals weaknesses, bottlenecks, or failures that could arise during real-world usage, especially during peak traffic periods. It ensures that the system either maintains performance under high stress or recovers gracefully from failures.
Stress testing’s use cases and metrics are very similar to load testing. The big difference is that stress tests crank everything up considerably. For instance, this testing the ideal time to run such testing would be during, say, Black Friday, when tons of people are guaranteed to flood your app.
And that’s about it for load test vs stress test vs performance testing. We’re finally done with this bewildering trio. So, it’s high time to look at tools that will make executing each of them easier.
There’s lots of software for performance and load testing. And before you settle on a particular option, be sure to conduct a detailed evaluation where you consider:
Overall, don’t jump on the most popular or trusted options. Tools with a good reputation have earned their status, no one is arguing that. But they simply might not be the ideal variant for your particular case.
In case you struggle to find one tool that covers all your needs, don’t be afraid to mix and match a few options. This way, you can often save costs and give your testing what it actually requires.
People build character naturally. They go through life, encountering difficulties. And they either overcome or succumb to them. That approach wouldn’t work with software. If you allow it to sort of develop naturally, you’d be rushing to your business goals at one millimeter per hour.
So, to guarantee your product’s timely success, you need to use performance testing and do so smartly. Remember, a stress-free existence will turn your app into a slug. And too much pressure will split it in half.
To find that perfect balance, assemble a team that can expertly deal with IT adversity.
Software testing is the process of evaluation a software item to detect differences between given input and expected output. Software testing is a process that should be done during the development process. In other words, software testing is a verification and validation process.
This article is devoted to highlighting the most popular software testing tools nowadays.
Here are some important tools to test the performance, load and stress of the website/application. These tools ensure that your website/application will run under high performance and less load & stress.
Apache JMeter is a 100% pure Java desktop application designed to load test functional behavior and measure performance...
Ready to speed up the testing process?