Artillery

Overview

Artillery brings load testing, Playwright-based end-to-end testing, and production monitoring into one toolkit for backend systems. Its hybrid deployment model supports a self-hosted command-line workflow alongside Artillery Cloud reporting. Cloud reporting is optional for each test run, and load tests run in your own environment even when you send reports to Artillery Cloud.

Its performance testing covers load, stress, and soak scenarios, with distributed execution across AWS Lambda, AWS Fargate, and Azure Container Instances. HTTP, WebSocket, and Socket.IO are supported directly; plugins can add other protocols. Artillery also supports API testing. For more options in the category, browse Performance Testing Software.

Key features

Distributed load testing

Distributed tests can use workers across AWS Lambda, AWS Fargate, or Azure Container Instances. Worker capacity varies by plan: Free allows up to 5 workers per distributed test, Team up to 25, and Business has no worker limit. Tests can last up to 30 minutes on Free and two hours on Team; Business has no test-duration limit.

Artillery supports HTTP, WebSocket, and Socket.IO without requiring plugins. Additional protocols are available through plugins, giving teams a way to extend protocol coverage beyond the built-in options.

Playwright and browser checks

Playwright scripts can run as load tests or synthetic checks. That lets teams include browser flows in performance work as well as use them for synthetic monitoring. The homepage describes a Turbo runner beta for sharding and parallelizing large Playwright suites. E2E test cases per report are limited by plan: 25 on Free, 50 on Team, and unlimited on Business.

Integrations and monitoring

Listed integrations include Datadog, OpenTelemetry, New Relic, Splunk, Honeycomb, and AWS CloudWatch for monitoring and observability workflows. For delivery pipelines, Artillery lists GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD, Jenkins, CircleCI, and Azure DevOps.

Security and data handling

Artillery Cloud reports third-party penetration tests, MFA and SSO, audit logging, least-privilege access controls, and encryption at rest. Its security overview says Cloud customer data resides in AWS eu-west-1 and is not transferred to another region or third-party services.

For the self-hosted CLI, Artillery says its employees and contractors cannot access test targets, test data, scripts, or test metadata. Cloud reporting is opt-in for each run, and the test itself remains in the user's environment when reports are sent to Cloud. The security policy says reports sent to [email protected] are acknowledged within 24 hours, with a more detailed response within two business days.

Pricing

Artillery uses a freemium model with a free plan and a free trial. The listed paid plans start at 199.00 USD per month.

The pricing page lists email support and Slack Connect; Slack Connect is available with an annual subscription. It also warns that continued overages may degrade service and can put an account in read-only mode, so report volume and test requirements are worth matching to plan limits.

Platforms

Artillery lists support for API, Linux, macOS, self-hosted, web, and Windows. The combination of local execution and optional cloud reporting supports a hybrid setup, rather than requiring every load test to run in Artillery Cloud.

Who it's for

Artillery identifies application developers, test and QA engineers, and operations or SRE teams responsible for production backend systems as its typical users. It suits teams that need performance testing across APIs and protocols, want to include Playwright scenarios, or need to connect test activity with monitoring and CI/CD tools.

Pros and cons

Pros

• Combines load, stress, and soak testing with Playwright end-to-end testing and production monitoring.
• Supports distributed tests on AWS Lambda, AWS Fargate, and Azure Container Instances.
• Offers built-in HTTP, WebSocket, and Socket.IO support, with plugins for additional protocols.
• Cloud reporting is optional per run, while load tests run in the user's own environment.
• Free and paid plans have stated limits for reports, retention, team size, workers, test duration, and E2E cases.

Cons

• The Free plan is limited to 30 reports per month, 2 team members, up to 5 workers, and tests up to 30 minutes.
• Team and Free cap the number of E2E test cases per report; Business is the first plan listed without that limit.
• Continued overages may degrade service or result in read-only account access.
• The listed Artillery Cloud data residency is AWS eu-west-1, which may not suit organizations requiring another region.

Alternatives

Teams comparing load and performance testing tools can also consider Gatling, Taurus, BlazeMeter, Locust, Apache JMeter, LoadFocus, Grafana k6, and OctoPerf.

Verdict

Artillery's defining strength is its breadth: load, stress, and soak testing, distributed execution, Playwright scenarios, and production monitoring share one toolkit. Its protocol coverage and listed integrations make it relevant to teams working across backend services and established observability or CI/CD systems. The plan limits are important, especially for report volume, worker count, duration, and browser-test cases; organizations should also account for the stated eu-west-1 Cloud data residency and the consequences of sustained overages. For teams comfortable with those constraints and seeking both self-hosted execution and optional cloud reporting, Artillery offers a broad performance-testing setup.