Stress testing vs load testing

Two related techniques with different goals.

Load testing verifies that your system behaves correctly under expected traffic. Stress testing explores what happens when you deliberately go beyond those expectations.

When to use load testing

Before major launches, marketing events or seasonal peaks you want to know whether typical usage is safe. Load tests simulate realistic user numbers and traffic mixes.

When to use stress testing

Stress tests are about risk and resilience. They reveal breaking points, cascading failures and recovery behaviour so you can plan capacity and incident response.