Most effective and realistic free web-app load tester?

Question

I'm in the middle of picking tools to load test my Ruby on Rails app. So far I'm trying out -

• apachebench
• autobench
• httperf
• selenium
• trample

Is there anything else worth looking at? I don't have a ton of hardware, so efficiency is a concern.

Answer 1

Check out JMeter.

Answer 2

The famous one (at least for me):

• JMeter
• The Grinder
• OpenSTA

All support simulating concurrent users, can generate decent load, support distributed testing if required (with distributed agent). JMeter and OpenSTA have a recorder and recorded scripts are relatively easy to variablelize. For The Grinder, I'm not sure.

OpenSTA is the most polished one and with the most features (but is not portable).

JMeter is my preferred one mostly because I know it well and because testing can be easily automated (e.g. to be included in a build). Have a look at the user manual to get started. If you need to record over SSL, check BadBoy.

More interesting reading at Shootout: Load Runner vs The Grinder vs Apache JMeter.