Performance Testing vs Stress Testing vs Load Testing

Software Testing comprises of different testing practices such as unit testing, integration testing, UAT testing, accessibility testing, etc. Every testing practice is having its significant importance and role in the software development lifecycle (SDLC).

Among the different types of testing, there a few tests that help in improving the application performance such as performance testing, stress testing, and load testing. Though the purpose of these tests is to enhance the system performance, each testing practice is having a different strategy. Hence, while testing for the application’s performance, it is very crucial to understand the difference between these testing practices and perform the right one.

It is often confusion among the QA engineers in identifying the right performance test to improve the application’s behavior. There a number of testing practices to improve the application’s performance such as performance testing, load testing, and stress testing. 

Though these testing types have a common purpose to enhance the application’s behavior, each test is not practiced in every situation. These having several differences and the QA teams have to understand them so that the right testing type is practiced in the right scenario.

What Is Performance Testing? What Are Its Benefits?

Performance testing is one of the important software testing types that helps to determine the application’s performance such as responsiveness, scalability, reliability, speed, stability, etc. under a workload. Performance testing doesn’t help in finding bugs, but it removes the performance bottlenecks and enhance the overall application’s performance.

Benefits of Performance Testing

• Helps in measuring the software’s stability
• Assures in finding performance bugs in the early development life cycle
• Helps the teams to be aware of how the app functions under a normal load
• Ensures to identify discrepancies and resolve them
• Helps to validate the functional features of the application

What Is Stress Testing? What Are Its Benefits?

Stress Testing is one of the testing types under performance testing that helps in detecting the application’s breaking point and also identifies the maximum load the application can handle. 

In other words, stress testing determines the application’s robustness and error handling capacity under heavy workloads. Stress testing is practiced by considering more data and many users to identify the system’s behavior under pressure.

Benefits of Stress Testing

• Helps to validate if data can be corrupted when the system is overstressed
• Assures to find bugs and synchronization issues
• Verifies the delivery and error messaging feature during failure
• Assures to deliver reliable software by overcoming the risks of software failures

What Is Load Testing? What Are Its Benefits?

Load testing is one of the software testing types where it helps in identifying how an application behaves under real-life load conditions. In this testing type, the application is tested under multiple users.

The purpose of load testing is to develop an application that is stable under unexpected extreme load conditions. This testing methodology is also known as Endurance testing. It can be easily performed by opting for a suitable automation tool.

Benefits of Load Testing

• Helps in increasing customer satisfaction
• Ensures to reduce failures in cost
• Assures to improve the application’s scalability
• Helps to identify bottlenecks related to performance before its production
• Assures to minimize system down-time bugs

Conclusion

In the process SDLC, every testing practice is essential, and especially to increase customer’s satisfaction and deliver applications that are assured with the responsiveness, scalability, reliability, speed, stability, etc., the QA engineers need to perform performance testing, load testing and stress testing based on the scenarios. 

However, to deliver an application that meets the performance metrics, leverage performance testing services from an independent QA testing services provider.