Updated March 23, 2023

Difference Between Load Testing and Stress Testing

Load testing is a type of performance test that determines the output under real-life load conditions of a system, software application or software product, whereas Stress testing is a software test that checks the system’s reliability and stability. This test determines the robustness of the system and its handling of errors under extremely heavy load conditions.

What is Load Testing: Load research simulates the real load on any website or program. The measurements are performed during normal and heavy loads. This method of testing is performed in the near completion of a development project. Load checks are carried out to find out how many users can manage the program. You can also look at various scenarios that allow you to concentrate on various parts of your system. Like the website or home page for web load testing on your web site. It also assists you in deciding how the load in the device is created and maintained.

What is Stress Testing: Stress testing is research which determines the system’s stability and robustness. The technology is non-functional. This test method uses a model of self-generated simulation to evaluate any hypothetical scenario. Stress tests on the website and app are critical for major events like tickets for a popular and people-oriented concert. Therefore, the potential for machine endurance should be regularly tested. This will also help you prepare for unexpected spikes and give you more time and resources to correct any bottleneck.

Head to Head Comparison between Load Testing and Stress Testing (Infographics)

Below are the top 6 comparisons between Load Testing vs Stress Testing:

Key differences between Load Testing vs Stress Testing

Let us discuss some key differences between Load Testing vs Stress Testing in the following points:

A load test is designed to conduct a certain number of system requests to test the system’s functionality at different simultaneous request rates. A stress test is designed to increase the number of simultaneous applications on a system’s past degradation of performance to the point that they fail completely.
A load check guarantees that a web system can handle the projected traffic volume and is therefore also known as Volume testing. When a load test peaks in the number of concurrent users, a fundamental stress check continues to increase the system load until the resources are overloaded.
The testers must establish the threshold for reasonable deterioration as an appropriate value for the end-user so that users do not bounce from the website. This allows the system to see how the system handles it, and if the system is able to perform a graceful recovery.
We consider that they are definitely not completely independent of each other in these concepts of a load test or stress test. Sometimes, when you run the load check’s upper limits, you can actually run a stress test to drive the system beyond the limits of available resources. You can begin to see a load test failure similar to the failures that typically occur when a stress test is carried out.

Comparison Table

The table below summarizes the comparisons between Load Testing vs Stress Testing:

Load testing	Stress Testing
Load testing is used by the networks, database and website servers to determine application performance.	The response time and reliability of the system were checked by stress.
Load testing allows a tester, prior to deployment on the production server, to recognize the bottleneck and can also say the source of bottlenecks.	Stress testing allows the tester to monitor the device functionality if the number of users unexpectedly rises prior to system failure or crashes.
The load on every application or software has reproduced this type of testing.	It is used to access the application’s reliability and robustness.
Load monitoring is used to test program forms on the cloud and database servers.	It is used to access the application’s solidity and reliability.
The costs of failures can be reduced after the application has been load tested, and after customer satisfaction increased.	After the code is checked stressfully, and if the system fails, it will quickly recover when the breakpoint is found early, and it will also see the crash.
Calculated attributes are peak power, server quantity as well as response time in a load check.	This type of test controls the response time of stability, etc.