K6

This item was not updated in last three versions of the Radar. Should it have appeared in one of the more recent editions, there is a good chance it remains pertinent. However, if the item dates back further, its relevance may have diminished and our current evaluation could vary. Regrettably, our capacity to consistently revisit items from past Radar editions is limited.

Mar 2022

Trial

At AOE, we need to have to run load tests against services.

Grafana K6 is an open-source load testing tool with a quick and lightweight setup and provides

CLI with developer friendly API
Scripting support

allowing us to pinpoint performance issues.

Jul 2021

Assess

Load Testing is a testing process in which the performance of a software application or system is tested under a specific expected load. It determines how the system behaves while being accessed by multiple users simultaneously. The goals of Load Testing is to improve performance bottlenecks and to ensure stability under high traffic. When done regularly, it provides confidence in the system, its reliability and performance, helps identify the bottlenecks in the system under heavy user stress scenarios before they happen in a production environment, and gives protection against poor user experience when using the system.

K6 is a developer-centric, free and open-source load testing tool. The command line runner executes scripts written in JavaScript and allows to configure the execution time and the number of virtual users. The tool can be used for load testing and performance testing. However, it can not be used to run tests that rely only on the browser, making it more suitable for testing of APIs.