> I used K6 to perform a load test. K6 is a software that will generate “virtual users” who continuously run test scenarios defined using javascript.<p>K6s is a pretty good load testing tool, however my problem with it is that it doesn't simulate <i>everything</i> a browser does: fetching all of the image files, fonts, as well as anything that might get downloaded and executed after upgrading the version of your application with some new functionality, but forgetting about adding new API routes etc. to the tests (e.g. if a new panel in the app gets loaded even without explicit user input, say, a new UI improvement with some useful data). You might need to do updates to your test code with each next app version for this, a relatively high maintenance approach.<p>The way I've worked around this previously was setting up Selenium + Python inside of containers that were assigned system users through a centralized service I wrote for that and then used the site in question like a real user would. It was pretty close to the real world, though sadly didn't scale too well - because with each automated browser instance needing ~512 MB of RAM, only small amounts of users could be viably tested.<p>Either way, small VPSes are still a great option in my eyes! Here's a few providers that I've personally found viable:<p><pre><code> - Hetzner: https://www.hetzner.com/cloud (time based billing, good selection of services, also allows easily attaching more storage etc.)
- Contabo: https://contabo.com/en (pretty good option, the UI used to be a bit antiquated, there are setup fees, apparently a bit overprovisioned)
- Time4VPS: https://www.time4vps.com/?affid=5294 (I use them for my sites, affordable and stable, though not as modern as Hetzner; affiliate link, remove affid otherwise)
- Scaleway: https://www.scaleway.com/en/stardust-instances/ (overall expensive, but their Stardust offering is pretty good, when available, which isn't that often)
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Apart from that, it can also be quite useful to take some old hardware and turn it into your own homelab - I'm currently doing that for my NAS, backup nodes and CI nodes, just a few AMD 200 GEs with 35 W TDP that are way cheaper than anything that actually needs good uptime. For example, buying a 1 or 2 TB HDD for storing data is cheaper than most cloud options, even when you include additional expenses for backups. As for compute, it varies - if you have workloads that need to infrequently do lots of number crunching, the cloud can be cheaper, actually.