Overview

Locust

Stacks174

Followers317

Votes51

GitHub Stars27.0K

Forks3.1K

Wrk

Stacks8

Followers11

Votes0

Locust vs Wrk: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this article, we will explore the key differences between Locust and Wrk. Locust and Wrk are both widely used tools for load testing and performance evaluation of web applications. However, they have some distinct features that set them apart. Let's dive into the specifics below.

Architecture: Locust is a distributed load testing tool that uses a master-slave setup, where the master controls the test execution and the slaves generate user loads. On the other hand, Wrk is a command-line tool that runs on a single machine and generates a high number of connections to stress test the server.
Scripting Language: Locust provides a user-friendly scripting interface that allows testers to write load testing scenarios using Python code. It offers flexibility and customizability to simulate realistic user behavior. In contrast, Wrk does not provide a scripting language and relies on command-line options for specifying the load testing parameters.
Scalability: Locust is designed to scale horizontally by adding more slave nodes to distribute the load across multiple machines. This allows for high concurrency and the ability to simulate millions of concurrent users. Wrk, being a single-threaded tool, is limited to the capabilities of a single machine and cannot scale horizontally.
Metrics and Reporting: Locust provides a detailed web-based UI that displays real-time statistics and graphs during the load test. It offers various metrics such as response times, requests per second, and failure rates. Additionally, Locust allows exporting test results in formats like CSV and JSON for further analysis. In contrast, Wrk lacks a built-in reporting capability, and users need to manually process the output using external tools.
Request Injection: Locust allows dynamic request generation and injection, providing better test case variability. Testers can parametrize requests and inject data from external sources. Wrk, being a simple load generator, does not support dynamic request injection and requires test cases to be predefined before the test execution.
Concurrency Model: Locust uses an event-driven, cooperative multitasking model known as gevent. This allows the simulation of thousands of concurrent users with a relatively low number of threads. Wrk, on the other hand, follows a more traditional thread-per-connection model, which can create a higher overhead when dealing with a large number of connections.

In summary, Locust offers a distributed architecture, a flexible scripting language, scalability across multiple machines, comprehensive reporting capabilities, dynamic request injection, and an efficient concurrency model. Wrk, on the other hand, is a simpler tool with a single-threaded design, limited scalability, and lacks advanced reporting features.

Advice on Locust, Wrk

Vrashab

QA at Altair

Jun 23, 2020

Needs adviceon

Gatling

Locust

Flood IO

I have to run a multi-user load test and have test scripts developed in Gatling and Locust.

I am planning to run the tests with Flood IO, as it allows us to create a custom grid. They support Gatling. Did anyone try Locust tests? I would prefer not to use multiple infra providers for running these tests!

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Comments

Detailed Comparison

Locust	Wrk
Locust is an easy-to-use, distributed, user load testing tool. Intended for load testing web sites (or other systems) and figuring out how many concurrent users a system can handle.	It is a hiring platform that provides an affordable way for small businesses to get a handle on their hiring process—a seamless set of features to create custom job posts and application forms, manage incoming candidates, and document the entire journey.
Define user behaviour in code;Distributed & scalable;Proven & battle tested	Applicant tracking system; Hosted job board; Hosted application forms; Candidate tracking; Candidate documentation
Statistics
GitHub Stars 27.0K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 3.1K	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 174	Stacks 8
Followers 317	Followers 11
Votes 51	Votes 0
Pros & Cons
Pros 15 Hackable 11 Supports distributed 7 Open source 6 Easy to setup 6 Easy to use Cons 1 Bad design	No community feedback yet
Integrations
Python	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Locust, Wrk?

k6

It is a developer centric open source load testing tool for testing the performance of your backend infrastructure. It’s built with Go and JavaScript to integrate well into your development workflow.

Gatling

Gatling is a highly capable load testing tool. It is designed for ease of use, maintainability and high performance. Out of the box, Gatling comes with excellent support of the HTTP protocol that makes it a tool of choice for load testing any HTTP server. As the core engine is actually protocol agnostic, it is perfectly possible to implement support for other protocols. For example, Gatling currently also ships JMS support.

Loader.io

Loader.io is a free load testing service that allows you to stress test your web-apps/apis with thousands of concurrent connections.

BlazeMeter

Simulate any user scenario for webapps, websites, mobile apps or web services. 100% Apache JMeter compatible. Scalable from 1 to 1,000,000+ concurrent users.<br>

Apache JMeter

It is open source software, a 100% pure Java application designed to load test functional behavior and measure performance. It was originally designed for testing Web Applications but has since expanded to other test functions.

RedLine13

It is a load testing platform that brings the low cost power of the cloud to JMeter and other open source load testing tools.

AWS Device Farm

Run tests across a large selection of physical devices in parallel from various manufacturers with varying hardware, OS versions and form factors.

Flood IO

Performance testing with Flood increases customer satisfaction and confidence in your production apps and reduces business risk.

Blitz

Build bulletproof, scalable solutions with Blitz - a simple and fun service for load testing web apps and APIs in the cloud. Blitz offers powerful yet simple capabilities including continuous monitoring, performance testing and remediation. Blitz enables you to instantly burst up to 50,000 concurrent users against your app in seconds from multiple points of presence around the world.

BambooHR

It collects and organizes all the information you gather throughout the employee life cycle, then helps you use it to achieve great things. Whether you’re hiring, onboarding, preparing compensation, or building culture, BambooHR gives you the time and insights to focus on your most important asset—your people.