Load Testing vs Stress Testing

Load Testing

Load testing is basically evaluates the performance of the AUT(application under testing with predefined loads.We need to check the performance of the application by constantly increasing the load on the application. With the help of this, we will examine how the system will perform under different loads. It is interesting to see the behavior of the application under zero load. It is basically used to check the response time of the application.

For example:
Suppose if we are testing the email functionality of an application, we will check how many users can use the application at once. We will vary the number of users and allow them use the different functionalities of the email at once. We will examine the behavior of application under such conditions.

Why load testing is done:

1. The goal of the load testing is to check the upper limit of the database used, hardware and network.
2. Load testing can check memory leak and management of the memory.
3. Load testing will check the load balancing problem, bandwidth issue and capacity of the application.

Stress Testing

The purpose of the stress testing is to check the performance of AUT (application under testing) when excess load of the resource has been given on the application. It is basically used to check the performance of the application under adverse conditions. It shows how the system recovers from the adverse conditions and how gracefully it will come to its normal state.

For example:
Suppose an application has been built which takes only 40 user attempts. So stress testing is done by giving load of the users to the application by allowing 43 users to use the application. The main objective of the testing is to see how gracefully the system will recover back from the adverse condition to normal condition.

Why is stress testing done:

1. Examine the behavior of the application after crash.
2. Examine whether the application accept the adverse condition gracefully or not.
3. Examine whether the application comes back to its normal condition and the sensitive data is still preserved or not.

Difference between load and stress testing

Load Testing

1. Load testing helps in determining the reliability of the application.
2. It helps in examining the behavior of the application under different loads.
3. The main focus of load testing is to check the response time of the application.
4. Load testing is a subset of stress testing.

Stress Testing

1. The main focus of stress testing is to check the reliability of the application.
2. Stress testing is used to check the behavior of the application under extreme load.
3. The main focus is to check the throughput.
4. Stress Testing is the superset of the load testing.

Read More
The Advantages and Disadvantages of Black Box Insurance
Automated Testing vs Manual Testing

Copyright © ianswer4u.com