Performance Testing vs. Load Testing vs. Stress Testing: The Key Differences

With the growing demand for software, testing has become one of the most important aspects as it determines the success of the software. Among the different software testing, the important types include performance testing, load testing, and stress testing. The top differences between the three testing types are as discussed below.

1. Performance Testing

As the name suggests, performance testing is the type of testing done to determine the performance of the different components of a system or application. It helps in examining the speed, reliability, scalability, responsiveness, resource usage, and stability of the software. Setting standards or benchmark for software becomes easy with performance testing. Performance testing services outsourced by various companies  to check the performance of their networks and website servers.

Aim of Performance Testing

The main aim of performance testing is to set a benchmark behavior for a system or software. The performance testing benchmarks are expected to meet the industry defined benchmarks. Close monitoring of the results and performance of the application forms the core characteristics of performance testing.

Ensuring that an application performs in the desired manner is possible through performance testing. It helps in validating that the system or application is able to meet the performance requirements of businesses. Finding, analyzing, and resolving the performance issues become easy with the help of proper performance testing.

Also Read: Key Performance Metrics for Effective Performance Testing

Example of Performance Testing

Some of the examples of performance testing include checking HTTP connections, checking the suitable response time, as well as checking the concurrent users.

2. Load Testing

Load testing is a subset of performance testing. It is another popular type of testing that helps in determining how an application or website performs under heavy load over a period of time. It helps in checking the behavior of an application in normal as well as in high load conditions. By steadily and constantly increasing the load, the threshold limit of the system is determined. Load testing determines the number of users a particular application or system can handle.

Aim of Load Testing

Finding out bugs like buffer overflows, memory leaks, memory management leaks, and more, which cannot be detected in other testing methods, is one of the prime aims of load testing. To ensure that the application performs well, even under increased load is why load testing is done. Checking the server quality, peak performance, and response time are other significant aims of load testing.

With load testing, you can determine the operating capacity and check whether the current infrastructure has the potential to run the application or not. Achieving the performance point that was identified during performance testing is important.

Also Read: Key Performance Metrics for Effective Performance Testing

Some of the significant examples of load testing are testing a mail server with a large number of concurrent users, testing a word processor with a large volume of data, and more.

3. Stress Testing

Stress testing is another type of performance testing. It is often referred to as negative testing as it crushes the resources and tries to break the system. It determines how gracefully as the system recovers after failing due to extreme loads.

Aim of Stress Testing

The main aim of stress testing is to find the post-crash results in order to determine the application performance after the failure. It helps in examining the behavior of the system under extreme loads and how the system recovers from the failure. It helps in avoiding unexpected failures that may affect the security of the system.

Also Read: JMeter Vs. Locust- Performance Testing Tools

Some of the examples of stress testing include a restart of the online database, random shut down and restart ports, and more.

All the testing types mentioned above are equally important for the optimum success of a system of software. Conducting all the performance tests helps in avoiding all the potential problems and enhancing the performance of applications.