Resources
Guides, tutorials, and best practices for HTTP load testing and performance optimization.
Why Your API Response Times Are Slow (And How to Fix Them)
Practical strategies for identifying and fixing slow API response times, from database queries to network overhead.
Soak Testing: Finding Bugs That Only Appear Over Time
How to run soak tests that reveal memory leaks, connection exhaustion, and other problems that only surface after hours of operation.
HTTP Load Testing Explained
A straightforward explanation of HTTP load testing — what it is, why it matters, and how it helps you build reliable web applications.
Load Testing Microservices Without Losing Your Mind
How to approach load testing when your system is split across dozens of services, and what to watch for that's different from monoliths.
Getting Your Timeouts Right: A Load Testing Perspective
How to configure and test timeouts properly — connection timeouts, read timeouts, and why getting them wrong causes cascading failures.
Understanding Latency and Throughput
Deep dive into the two most important metrics in HTTP load testing: latency and throughput. Learn how they relate to each other and what they mean for your application's performance.
What is HTTP Load Testing?
Learn the fundamentals of HTTP load testing, why it matters for your applications, and how to get started with performance testing your APIs and web services.
API Load Testing: What You Need to Know
Everything you need to understand about load testing APIs — from REST endpoints to authentication handling and realistic test scenarios.
How to Benchmark Your REST API Properly
A practical guide to benchmarking REST APIs — methodology, metrics, and common mistakes that lead to misleading results.
Load Testing Applications Running in Docker
How to load test containerized applications — resource limits, networking considerations, and container-specific gotchas.
How Response Size Affects API Performance
The often-overlooked impact of payload size on API performance — serialization costs, network transfer, and what to do about large responses.
Load Testing Login and Auth Endpoints
How to properly load test authentication endpoints — login flows, token validation, and the unique challenges of testing auth systems.
Stress Testing vs Load Testing
The difference between load testing and stress testing, when to use each, and why both matter for building reliable systems.
Connection Pooling and Why It Matters for Performance
Understanding connection pools — how they work, why they matter, and how to size them correctly for your load.
Load Testing Paginated Endpoints
How to properly load test paginated APIs — offset vs cursor pagination, page size impact, and the performance patterns you need to watch for.
When Should You Actually Load Test?
A practical guide to when load testing makes sense, when it's overkill, and how to fit it into your development workflow.
5 Load Testing Mistakes That Waste Your Time
Common load testing mistakes that give you misleading results and how to avoid them.
Testing Webhook Endpoints Under Load
How to load test webhook receivers — the unique challenges of async endpoints and what metrics actually matter.
The Performance Cost of HTTPS: What Load Tests Reveal
Understanding SSL/TLS overhead in API performance — handshake costs, connection reuse, and what the numbers actually look like.
How to Test Your API Rate Limiting Actually Works
Testing rate limits under load — verifying they trigger correctly, checking edge cases, and ensuring they protect without breaking legitimate traffic.
Free Load Testing Tools Worth Using
A practical look at free load testing tools, what they're good at, and how to choose between them.
Load Testing File Upload Endpoints
How to load test file upload APIs — multipart requests, timeout considerations, and the unique challenges of testing upload endpoints.
Cold Start Performance: The Hidden Latency Problem
Understanding cold starts — why first requests are slow, where they happen, and how to measure and minimize their impact.
Desktop vs CLI Load Testing Tools
Comparing desktop applications and command-line tools for load testing — the tradeoffs, use cases, and when each makes sense.
What to Monitor While Your Load Test Runs
Load test results tell you what happened. Server metrics tell you why. Here's what to watch during your tests.
Load Testing GraphQL APIs: What's Different
GraphQL load testing has unique challenges — variable query complexity, single endpoints, and N+1 problems. Here's how to approach it.
Load Testing PUT, PATCH, and DELETE Endpoints
Most load testing focuses on GET and POST. Here's how to properly test update and delete operations.
Load Testing Without the Learning Curve
How to start load testing without getting lost in complex tools and configurations. A minimal, practical approach.
Load Testing WebSocket Connections
WebSockets are fundamentally different from HTTP. Here's how to approach load testing real-time connections.
Why Your Test Data Should Stay Local
The case for local-first load testing — privacy, security, and practical benefits of keeping your test data on your own machine.
Catching Performance Regressions Before They Ship
How to detect performance regressions early — establishing baselines, automating checks, and making performance part of your development process.
Setting Up a Proper Test Environment
How to create a test environment that gives you meaningful load testing results instead of misleading numbers.
Requests Per Second: The Number That Matters
Understanding requests per second (RPS) — what it measures, why it matters, and how to use it for capacity planning.
P95, P99, and Why Averages Lie
Understanding latency percentiles — what p50, p95, and p99 mean, why they matter more than averages, and how to use them.
Reading Error Rates Under Load
How to interpret error rates during load testing — what different error types mean and when to worry.
Throughput vs Latency: The Tradeoff
Understanding the relationship between throughput and latency — why you can't maximize both and how to find the right balance.
How to Read Load Test Results
A practical guide to interpreting load test results — what the numbers mean, what patterns to look for, and how to turn data into decisions.
Finding Your API's Breaking Point
How to systematically find where your API fails under load — the process, what to look for, and what to do with that information.
Load Testing Before Launch Day
A practical checklist for load testing before launching a new product, feature, or major release.
Load Testing When You Depend on Third Parties
How to load test your application when it depends on external APIs, payment processors, and other services you don't control.
When the Database Is the Problem
How to identify database bottlenecks in load testing and what to do when your database is limiting performance.
Measuring How Much Caching Actually Helps
How to test and quantify the performance impact of caching in your application.
What 'Concurrent Users' Actually Means
Demystifying concurrent users — what the term means, how it relates to requests per second, and how to think about it for capacity planning.
Creating Realistic Load Patterns
How to design load tests that reflect real traffic patterns instead of artificial constant load.
Setting Performance Baselines
How to establish performance baselines that let you detect regressions and track improvements over time.
Capacity Planning Without Guessing
How to use load testing data for capacity planning — predicting resource needs, planning for growth, and avoiding over-provisioning.
Making Load Testing Part of Your Workflow
How to integrate load testing into your development process so it happens consistently, not just before major releases.