Locust – A modern load testing framework

Took a look at Locust before and did not find it as useful or generic as ApacheBench or Httperf (by HP). Locust felt a little too cutesy and high-level for most of the work I wanted to do - which was pretty simple.<p>Furthermore there were a lot of timing inaccuracies between the same test runs. It certainly could have been a fault in our code, but ab and Httperf seemed to give a lot more reliable and useful timing information. And they are just simpler to use. For one, not being browserbased can be nice when you are trying to iterate quickly.<p>Not trying to sell anyone against Locust, but at the least, I recommend you take a look at ab and Httperf to make sure you don&#x27;t need something a whole lot simpler.

Used it for some substantial loadtesting, loved it. It&#x27;s real advantage compared to AB, siege, etc, is how easy it makes it to simulate real user interactions, not just mash on a few endpoints. Only flaw in my books is the crazy high ulimit you need for simulating high numbers of unique actors. The easy clustering mitigates this though.

Shameless self promotion - I just wrote up a little doc [1] on using Locust and Kubernetes to run and scale distributed load tests along with some sample code [2].<p>I looked at JMeter and Gatling as alternatives but they were either a bit clunky (JMeter) or not distributed out of the box (Gatling). Late in the game I did discover Tsung (Erlang) but didn&#x27;t get time to try it out - looks pretty powerful though.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cloud.google.com&#x2F;solutions&#x2F;distributed-load-testing-using-kubernetes" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cloud.google.com&#x2F;solutions&#x2F;distributed-load-testing-...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;GoogleCloudPlatform&#x2F;distributed-load-testing-using-kubernetes" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;GoogleCloudPlatform&#x2F;distributed-load-test...</a>

I used locust to supplement testing that third party was doing (they used some ibm product that I didn&#x27;t have a license too).<p>I liked locust because it was easy to start using, but you write a decent amount of code if you have a complex application. I suggest using pyquery (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pypi.python.org&#x2F;pypi&#x2F;pyquery" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pypi.python.org&#x2F;pypi&#x2F;pyquery</a>) with it if you need to inspect any html, it was quite useful

Locust is a great tool. We use it to loadtest our websites and even a single Mac can make huge traffic. If somebody is interested in a highly optimized Vagrant VM for loadtesting and Locust (it&#x27;s possible through a VM, but not exorbitant high loadtesting) check out this url <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;PyBossa&#x2F;loadtesting" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;PyBossa&#x2F;loadtesting</a>

My fave locust setup is spinning up aws instances to tests from time to time. I&#x27;ve created ansible automation to help on that (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;gleicon&#x2F;locust-swarm" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;gleicon&#x2F;locust-swarm</a>) but it can be done manually. I still look on how to make it run casper.js tests but I think it would interfere with locust&#x27;s performance.

A bit tongue in cheek, but is a testimonial from someone at EA&#x2F;Dice something you&#x27;d want to highlight? I know Battlefield 4 is almost two years old at this point, but man, I still have the scars from that game...<p>In all seriousness, definitely going to check this out, not enough load testing is done at the company I work for, plus I want to learn more python.

Does it support testing a websocket app ?

Does anyone know how it compares to Gatling (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;gatling.io" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;gatling.io</a>) ?

So from what I understand this stands somewhere between as complex as Apache Bench and something as simple as Seige? I&#x27;ve had very little success with the former since its scripts are massive XML files and the clunky UI also doesn&#x27;t help much.<p>As a python developer, I&#x27;m glad to see this and will surely give this a try shortly. Thanks!

I&#x27;ve been using siege for load testing. I&#x27;ll give this a go at some point.<p>I don&#x27;t use python as much as I&#x27;d like and this seems like a good work related use-case for me.

I used it to test a Django app once. It&#x27;s great because you can test the entire &quot;flow&quot; of an app, clicking on various forms.

Does it provide graphical data representation or any kind of dashboard&#x2F;intergation with graphite or something else?

Do we have an equivalent for WS yet?