In simple English
This tool floods your website or API with thousands of fake visitors at the same time. It checks if your server slows down or crashes when too many people use it. You write your test plans in text files and run them from your terminal. It helps you find weak spots in your code before real customers see them. The software is free to download and run on your own computer.
What it is
Artillery (a load testing platform that simulates high user traffic against web servers and APIs) sends automated requests at scale to measure response times and failure rates. It supports modern protocols such as HTTP, WebSockets, gRPC, and browser automation via Playwright (a tool that controls a real web browser to test user actions).
What it is good for
Solo developers and small teams who want to test if their application can survive a sudden rush of users or a product launch.
- Simulates real user behavior with multi-step transactions and scriptable actions.
- Runs browser-based tests using Playwright for realistic frontend performance checks.
- Integrates easily with cloud providers to scale tests across many servers.
- Requires Node.js (a software environment that runs JavaScript on your computer) and comfort with command-line tools.
- Running massive browser-based tests can consume significant RAM and CPU.
- Some Azure-specific modules carry commercial restrictions under the Business Source Licence.
manual clicking and guessing server capacity
Grafana for viewing performance metrics during a test run
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npm install -g artillery artillery --version