Hybrid Performance Testing for Websites
End-to-end browser testing and load testing in the same k6 script
The limitations of load testing a website on the protocol level
- Ignores user experience as it only focuses on what is happening on the backend, not the frontend
- Scripts can get lengthy to create if you are trying to mimic complex user flows
- More difficult to maintain as your website grows
The limitations of only doing frontend performance
- Frontend performance does not look under the hood
- Without load, it does not test under traffic conditions
- Browser-level load testing is resource intensive and costly
Use the same tool for frontend
and backend performance testing
Run a bulk of load on the protocol-level and spin up a few virtual users at the browser level
for a hybrid approach and get a holistic view of your application's performance
Get closer to your user experience
Get insights to your user experience by also capturing browser performance metrics alongside existing protocol metrics.
Find blind spots and errors
Browser-based performance testing can catch issues related to browsers that won't be detected on the protocol-level.
Cross-team collaboration
Developers, test automation engineers, SDETs can use the same tool and collaborate on performance testing.
How it works
Leverage existing k6 features and use a familiar API inspired by Playwright
The k6 browser module has changed my approach to automated performance testing. Now I’m able to test real user flows while using the same load testing tool to generate multiple users. All in the same test!
John Hill — Web UI Test Engineer, Space Mission Control Software
