Most load testing tools offer a free version. There are typically many limitations that companies put on you when they offer free load testing. If you don’t like limitations, then you’ll probably want to check out RedLine13.
Limitations
Here is a common set of free load testing limitations that you’ll find on load testing subscriptions:
- Number of tests
- Test duration
- vCPUs (for load test servers)
RedLine13 Free Load Testing
Here is what RedLine has to say about those limitations on free load testing:
- Number of tests – unlimited
- Test duration – 1 day
- vCPU – 10 vCPUs
Let’s look at these limitations.
Number of tests – You can run an unlimited number of tests and RedLine13 charges you nothing! You’ll simply pay AWS directly for your AWS costs.
Test duration – We rarely see even our biggest customers run tests longer than one day. So that should hardly be a limitation for anyone.
vCPUs – Let’s look at what you can run with a limit of 10 vCPUs. An m3.medium is 1 vCPU. So you can run 10 m3.medium servers. A t3.large is 2 vCPUs. That means you could use 5 of them. An m5.xlarge is 4 vCPUs so you can run two of them. Any of those options give you a lot of processing power. Here’s a good post on How many vCPUs needed for Load Testing?
You may be wondering about other limitations and whether they will be an issue for you. Here are some others:
- Virtual users – unlimited
- URL’s graphed per test – 100
- Reporting features – unlimited
Once again, you see that RedLine13 does very little to limit you.
You may be wondering if you would ever need a paid subscription. The key reason would be if you need more processing power than what 10 vCPUs provides. A Basic subscription gives you 50 vCPUs. If you need even more than that or you have a team of load testers, then a Premium subscription is for you. But for many load testers, a RedLine13 free subscription is perfectly fine.
Try RedLine13 for yourself for free. And know up front how much you can do.