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codesenberg/bombardier

6,778GoAudience · ops devopsComplexity · 1/5Setup · easy

TLDR

A fast command-line HTTP load testing tool, point it at a URL, set concurrency and duration, and it reports requests per second, response times, latency percentiles, and error rates.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((bombardier))
    What it does
      HTTP benchmarking
      Load testing
      Performance metrics
    Output
      Requests per second
      Response times
      Status code counts
    Options
      Concurrent connections
      Duration or count
      HTTP/2 support
    Setup
      Pre-built binaries
      Go toolchain install
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Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Benchmark an API endpoint before deploying to production to see how many requests per second it handles under load.

USE CASE 2

Run a 60-second load test with 100 concurrent connections to observe how response times degrade under pressure.

USE CASE 3

Check the 99th percentile latency of a web server to understand worst-case response times before a product launch.

USE CASE 4

Test an HTTP/2 endpoint by switching bombardier to Go's standard net/http library via a command-line flag.

Tech stack

Gofasthttpnet/http

Getting it running

Difficulty · easy Time to first run · 5min
License terms are not described in the explanation.

In plain English

bombardier is a command-line tool written in Go for HTTP benchmarking. Benchmarking a web server means sending a large number of requests to it and measuring how many it handles per second, how fast it responds, and whether it returns errors. This kind of testing is used to understand how a server holds up under heavy load before putting it into production. You run it by pointing it at a URL and specifying how many concurrent connections to open, along with either a total request count or a duration to run for. The output shows the average requests per second, average response time, standard deviation and maximum of response times, a breakdown of HTTP status codes received, and overall data throughput in megabytes per second. An optional latency distribution flag also shows how fast the slowest 50%, 75%, 90%, and 99% of requests were answered, which gives a clearer picture of how a server behaves in its worst cases rather than just its average. By default, bombardier uses fasthttp, a high-performance HTTP library that lets it sustain very high request rates. For servers that use HTTP/2, or where specific header handling is required, you can switch it to use Go's standard net/http library instead via a command-line flag. Pre-built binaries for each supported platform are available in the releases section of the repository. Go developers can also install the latest version with a single command using the Go toolchain.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
Run bombardier against my local API at localhost:8080/api/health with 200 concurrent connections for 60 seconds and show me the full latency percentile breakdown.
Prompt 2
How do I use bombardier to benchmark an HTTP/2 endpoint and compare it against HTTP/1.1 performance on the same server?
Prompt 3
Write a shell script that uses bombardier to test my web server at 10, 50, 100, and 500 concurrent connections and log the requests-per-second for each level.
Prompt 4
How do I install bombardier on macOS using the Go toolchain and immediately run a 1000-request benchmark against a URL?
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