Difference Between Load Testing and Stress Testing

Performance testing of a system should be done at regular intervals. This testing helps in knowing about bottlenecks and other issues in a system. The two most common types of testing are load testing and stress testing. In this article, we will discuss the difference between Load Testing and Stress Testing.

What is Performance Testing?

Performance testing is performed to know about the speed, reliability, scalability, and other attributes of a software system. The two most common types of testing are load testing and stress testing. Performance testing lets the professionals know about bottlenecks and performance issues in a test environment. Besides load and stress testing, other types of testing can also be performed which include ?

• Spike testing
• Soak testing
• Capacity testing

Professionals have to choose the type of test on the basis of the goals that they want to achieve.

What is Load Testing?

Load testing is a type of testing in which the performance of the system is tested on the basis of load like traffic, requests, etc. Load testing is a non-functional test but it can provide information regarding errors, crashes, bottlenecks, etc.

Advantages of Load Testing

Load testing has many advantages and some of them are listed below ?

• The risk of downtime is reduced
• Performance for service level agreements is verified
• Scalability can be improved as the testing lets the users know about the changes needed
• Let the professionals know about hidden bugs, inefficient code, etc.

What is Stress Testing?

Stress testing is a type of testing which works on the extreme load that a system can bear. Stress testing lets the professionals know about the point at which the performance of the app will be disturbed and it will become slow. This can also result in crashes and failure of a system.

Advantages of Stress Testing

Stress testing has many advantages and some of them are listed below ?

• Stress testing determines the maximum amount of load that a system can bear
• Let the professionals know about triggers so that failures and crashes can be prevented
• Let the professionals know about the security issues
• Show the results of data loss or occurrence of other issues if a system fails.

Difference between Load Testing and Stress Testing

The table below shows the difference between load testing and stress testing.

Which is better: Load Testing or Stress Testing?

Professionals have to test the performance of a system and they can use load testing and stress testing to achieve their goals. Load test is sufficient for organizations that want to know whether the system is working fine or not.

The ambitions of large organizations are very high so they depend on stress testing. It is so because security issues are to be dealt and regular monitoring of the system has to be performed to prevent data leakage and loss. Stress testing provides everything that is done by load testing so professionals will know about bottlenecks, errors, etc.

Conclusion

Performance testing is necessary to check whether a system or an app is performing smoothly or facing issues. The two most common types of tests are load testing and stress testing. Load testing is performed to increase the traffic while stress testing is performed to manage security.

FAQs on Load Testing and Stress Testing

1. What is the importance of load testing?

Load testing is important as professionals can know about the performance of a system or an application. Load testing is performed to know whether the application stops functioning at a certain point. This helps in fixing the issues that can result in the crashing of the application.

2. What are the measurements used in load testing?

The measurements used in load testing are as follows ?

• Response time is a measurement which tells about the time taken to give response to a user's request.
• Throughput is the measurement that tells about the amount of the processing of data in a given time.
• Server health and stability is a measurement which helps in monitoring the performance of a server.

3. What are the steps used to perform a load test?

The steps used to perform load testing are ?

• Definition of goals
• Setting up a load test environment
• Creation of load scenarios
• Running tests
• Analyzing results

4. What are the different types of stress testing?

The different types of stress testing are as follows ?

• Distributed Stress Testing
• Application Stress Testing
• Systemic Stress Testing
• Transactional Stress Testing
• Exploratory Stress Testing
• Volume Testing
• Endurance Testing

5. What are the features of stress testing?

Stress testing has the following features ?

• Risk identification
• Qualitative and quantitative analysis
• Variable parameters
• Cross-function involvement