Test the performance of your APIs with the Postman desktop app. Simulate user traffic by automatically sending requests in the app. You can observe how your API behaves under load and identify potential issues or bottlenecks that affect performance.
To configure a performance test, create a collection with the requests you want to send to your API. Postman uses these requests to simulate the activity of your API’s users. Each virtual user (VU) runs the requests in the specified order in a repeating loop. All of the virtual users operate in parallel to simulate real-world load on your API.
Performance tests run in the Postman desktop app on your computer and not in the cloud. When you start the test, the Collection Runner displays performance metrics in real time.
You can view performance test metrics such as the average response time, error rate, and throughput for all requests or individual requests. You can also compare two performance runs to understand how your API’s performance has changed over time.
After the performance test finishes running, you can view details about failed test assertions and view details about errors that occurred during the test. You can view the most common error, failed test assertions, and trends over time to help you identify the source of any performance issues.
By default, each virtual user sends requests with the same data during a performance test. You can also upload a data file with custom values for each virtual user. This enables you to vary the behavior of the virtual users to better simulate real-world traffic.
To learn how to troubleshoot performance tests, see Troubleshoot performance tests in Postman.