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Apigility vs Loader.io: What are the differences?
# Introduction
Apigility and Loader.io are two different tools serving distinct purposes in the realm of web development and performance testing. Here are the key differences between Apigility and Loader.io:
1. **Purpose**: Apigility is an API builder designed to streamline the process of creating and managing APIs, whereas Loader.io is a load testing tool that helps simulate high traffic scenarios to evaluate website performance under different loads.
2. **Target Audience**: Apigility is targeted towards developers and teams looking to build and maintain APIs, while Loader.io is primarily used by DevOps and performance engineers to assess website performance and scalability.
3. **Features**: Apigility offers features like API versioning, documentation generation, and RESTful services, while Loader.io focuses on features such as load testing, stress testing, and performance monitoring.
4. **Integration**: Apigility can be integrated with various API frameworks and tools like Zend Framework, Doctrine, and OAuth for seamless API development, while Loader.io can integrate with CI/CD tools like Jenkins, Docker, and AWS for automated load testing.
5. **Output Analysis**: Apigility provides insights into API usage metrics, error handling, and query performance, whereas Loader.io offers detailed reports on response times, error rates, throughput, and CPU utilization during load testing.
In Summary, Apigility is an API builder for developers, while Loader.io is a load testing tool for performance engineers, each serving a unique purpose in the web development ecosystem.
I have a team that is not heavy on programming skills. I am looking for a load testing tool that is easy to use. Preferably, the tool should be a record and playback tool without much programming. Also, the tool should be able to test APIs apart from web-based applications. What tool should I opt for?
My choice would be Apache JMeter, It's free and opensource plus it comes with lots of plugins and extendability. Apache JMeter needs a small amount of a learning curve and a basic understanding of Network, Protocols (TCP/IP ports, HTTP(S) and REST/SOAP, etc.) for initial setup. But it doesn't require programming skills. it has a nice record and playback option. You can still carry on without the developer skillset if you follow these steps. 1. Take backup. 2. Start recording and interact with the application. 3. stop recording and save the test case. This will give you your test-bed, after this, after these steps, every time just do Restore from backup and then Playback and observer results.
If you have longer recordings then an understanding of how to modify the recorded scripts will come handy.
For some of the advanced features such as Configuring variables, implementing loops, throttling adding think time, and automating test scaling to the number of users will require good planning of test scenarios and a Developer experience but this is true for any tool (even loader.io)
Disclaimer: I work at k6, and I recommend you try our tool.
It might require some coding skills, but we support a few options to record a user session to autogenerate the load test. Read How to record a browser session with k6 OSS.
The k6 Cloud also supports recording a user session with a Browser Extension. Additionally, it provides a Test Builder UI to generate a load test for testing APIs.
If you have questions or need help, you can ask on Slack and the Community forum.
Pros of Apigility
- Follows Standards, Easy to Use, Design Patterns Used1
- Active dev community, full-featured, REST + RPC1
Pros of Loader.io
- Easy to use9
- Free tier6
- Heroku add-on3
