What is Artillery used for?

Artillery is a load testing toolkit for HTTP, WebSocket, gRPC and browser-based tests that can run distributed on AWS Lambda or Fargate without managing infrastructure. It is a good fit for load testing APIs before a launch, browser-level performance tests in CI and distributed stress tests without infrastructure.

Is Artillery open source?

Yes. Artillery is open source under the MPL-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at artilleryio/artillery and is written mainly in TypeScript.

Yes. Artillery is open source, so the software itself is free to use. Paid plans are also available, starting at $199 per month.

What is Artillery an alternative to?

Artillery is an open-source alternative to OpenText LoadRunner, BlazeMeter and loader.io. Other open-source alternatives to OpenText LoadRunner include Gatling, Locust and k6.

Is Artillery actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Artillery was on 23 September 2026. The project has 9.1k stars on GitHub.

Artillery: open-source alternative to OpenText LoadRunner

About Artillery

Artillery is a load testing platform for APIs and web applications. It tests HTTP APIs, GraphQL, WebSocket, Socket.io, gRPC, Kinesis and more, and can use real headless browsers through Playwright, so both protocol-level and full browser load tests are possible. Any Node.js module can be used in test scripts.

Tests can scale out as distributed runs on AWS Lambda or AWS Fargate, with no servers to set up or manage. Workload modeling lets you simulate realistic user behavior using chained requests, multi-step scenarios and transactions, there are more than twenty integrations for monitoring, observability and CI/CD, and a plugin API supports extension. Topics mention OpenTelemetry, serverless testing and performance testing.

Most of the code is licensed under MPL-2.0, but some Azure-specific modules use the BSL, which allows evaluation and proof-of-concept use on Azure and requires a commercial licence for commercial or production use. Artillery is written in TypeScript and runs from the command line. It suits developers and SRE teams who want to script load tests as code.

Key features

Load tests for HTTP, WebSocket and gRPC
Browser load tests with Playwright
Distributed runs on AWS Lambda or Fargate
Workload modeling with multi-step flows
20+ monitoring and CI/CD integrations
Plugin API for extension
Use of any Node.js module

Good fit for

→Load testing APIs before a launch
→Browser-level performance tests in CI
→Distributed stress tests without infrastructure

Built with: TypeScript; JavaScript
Tags: load-testing; performance-testing; api-testing; playwright; serverless; websocket; grpc; typescript

Artillery: questions and answers

What is Artillery used for?: Artillery is a load testing toolkit for HTTP, WebSocket, gRPC and browser-based tests that can run distributed on AWS Lambda or Fargate without managing infrastructure. It is a good fit for load testing APIs before a launch, browser-level performance tests in CI and distributed stress tests without infrastructure.
Is Artillery open source?: Yes. Artillery is open source under the MPL-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at artilleryio/artillery and is written mainly in TypeScript.
Is Artillery free?: Yes. Artillery is open source, so the software itself is free to use. Paid plans are also available, starting at $199 per month.
What is Artillery an alternative to?: Artillery is an open-source alternative to OpenText LoadRunner, BlazeMeter and loader.io. Other open-source alternatives to OpenText LoadRunner include Gatling, Locust and k6.
Is Artillery actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Artillery was on 23 September 2026. The project has 9.1k stars on GitHub.