30 Days of Performance Testing Day 10: Load Testing or Stress Testing

We’re up to day 10 on our Performance testing challenge, today’s challenge was to think about and explore the differences between load testing and stress testing. What do you think these differences are? Are there any similarities or overlapping?

I always find load/stress test often gets a little confusing, especially when explaining to non-technical people. I try and explain by the following:

Load - testing under a expected load - usually go for expected load stuff based on know figures (expected number of transactions in a set time period, all members of team using system at once etc…).

Stress - testing under higher than expected conditions - so based on requirements look to get more users, more transactions in the app etc.

Not 100% if this is the best way to manage this, interested in everyones thoughts?

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Load testing is used to determine how the system behaves under a specific load.
For example, You should be prepared with the number of users for which you will be performing the operation.
These numbers can be decided on the basis of traffic on your system or your average user base.
Performing this test it will give you the idea, if the system is working as expected with the load you have provided.

Software stress testing on the other hand is used to determine the upper level of the load a system can support.
In this testing you can go beyond your average traffic of users to find out how system handles the stressed situation.
This will give you idea of how your system behaved when under huge load and determine up to what point it can hold the stress.

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