Vegeta

Vegeta is a versatile HTTP load testing tool built out of a need to drill HTTP services with a constant request rate. It can be used both as a command line utility and a library.

Install

Pre-compiled executables

Get them here.

Homebrew on Mac OS X

You can install Vegeta using the Homebrew package manager on Mac OS X:

$ brew update && brew install vegeta

Source

You need go installed and GOBIN in your PATH. Once that is done, run the command:

$ go get -u github.com/tsenart/vegeta

Versioning

Both the library and the CLI are versioned with SemVer v2.0.0.

After v8.0.0, the two components are versioned separately to better isolate breaking changes to each.

CLI releases are tagged with cli/vMAJOR.MINOR.PATCH and published on the Github releases page. As for the library, new versions are tagged with both lib/vMAJOR.MINOR.PATCH and vMAJOR.MINOR.PATCH. The latter tag is required for compatibility with go mod.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

Usage manual

Usage: vegeta [global flags] <command> [command flags]

global flags:
  -cpus int
    	Number of CPUs to use (defaults to the number of CPUs you have)
  -profile string
    	Enable profiling of [cpu, heap]
  -version
    	Print version and exit

attack command:
  -body string
    	Requests body file
  -cert string
    	TLS client PEM encoded certificate file
  -chunked
    	Send body with chunked transfer encoding
  -connections int
    	Max open idle connections per target host (default 10000)
  -duration duration
    	Duration of the test [0 = forever]
  -format string
    	Targets format [http, json] (default "http")
  -h2c
    	Send HTTP/2 requests without TLS encryption
  -header value
    	Request header
  -http2
    	Send HTTP/2 requests when supported by the server (default true)
  -insecure
    	Ignore invalid server TLS certificates
  -keepalive
    	Use persistent connections (default true)
  -key string
    	TLS client PEM encoded private key file
  -laddr value
    	Local IP address (default 0.0.0.0)
  -lazy
    	Read targets lazily
  -max-body value
    	Maximum number of bytes to capture from response bodies. [-1 = no limit] (default -1)
  -max-workers uint
    	Maximum number of workers (default 18446744073709551615)
  -name string
    	Attack name
  -output string
    	Output file (default "stdout")
  -proxy-header value
    	Proxy CONNECT header
  -rate value
    	Number of requests per time unit [0 = infinity] (default 50/1s)
  -redirects int
    	Number of redirects to follow. -1 will not follow but marks as success (default 10)
  -resolvers value
    	List of addresses (ip:port) to use for DNS resolution. Disables use of local system DNS. (comma separated list)
  -root-certs value
    	TLS root certificate files (comma separated list)
  -targets string
    	Targets file (default "stdin")
  -timeout duration
    	Requests timeout (default 30s)
  -unix-socket string
    	Connect over a unix socket. This overrides the host address in target URLs
  -workers uint
    	Initial number of workers (default 10)

encode command:
  -output string
    	Output file (default "stdout")
  -to string
    	Output encoding [csv, gob, json] (default "json")

plot command:
  -output string
    	Output file (default "stdout")
  -threshold int
    	Threshold of data points above which series are downsampled. (default 4000)
  -title string
    	Title and header of the resulting HTML page (default "Vegeta Plot")

report command:
  -buckets string
    	Histogram buckets, e.g.: "[0,1ms,10ms]"
  -every duration
    	Report interval
  -output string
    	Output file (default "stdout")
  -type string
    	Report type to generate [text, json, hist[buckets], hdrplot] (default "text")

examples:
  echo "GET http://localhost/" | vegeta attack -duration=5s | tee results.bin | vegeta report
  vegeta report -type=json results.bin > metrics.json
  cat results.bin | vegeta plot > plot.html
  cat results.bin | vegeta report -type="hist[0,100ms,200ms,300ms]"

-cpus

Specifies the number of CPUs to be used internally. It defaults to the amount of CPUs available in the system.

-profile

Specifies which profiler to enable during execution. Both cpu and heap profiles are supported. It defaults to none.

-version

Prints the version and exits.

attack command

-body

Specifies the file whose content will be set as the body of every request unless overridden per attack target, see -targets.

-cert

Specifies the PEM encoded TLS client certificate file to be used with HTTPS requests. If -key isn't specified, it will be set to the value of this flag.

-chunked

Specifies whether to send request bodies with the chunked transfer encoding.

-connections

Specifies the maximum number of idle open connections per target host.

-duration

Specifies the amount of time to issue request to the targets. The internal concurrency structure's setup has this value as a variable. The actual run time of the test can be longer than specified due to the responses delay. Use 0 for an infinite attack.

-format

Specifies the targets format to decode.

json format

The JSON format makes integration with programs that produce targets dynamically easier. Each target is one JSON object in its own line. The method and url fields are required. If present, the body field must be base64 encoded. The generated JSON Schema defines the format in detail.

jq -ncM '{method: "GET", url: "http://goku", body: "Punch!" | @base64, header: {"Content-Type": ["text/plain"]}}' |
  vegeta attack -format=json -rate=100 | vegeta encode

http format

The http format almost resembles the plain-text HTTP message format defined in RFC 2616 but it doesn't support in-line HTTP bodies, only references to files that are loaded and used as request bodies (as exemplified below).

Although targets in this format can be produced by other programs, it was originally meant to be used by people writing targets by hand for simple use cases.

Here are a few examples of valid targets files in the http format:

Simple targets

GET http://goku:9090/path/to/dragon?item=ball
GET http://user:password@goku:9090/path/to
HEAD http://goku:9090/path/to/success

Targets with custom headers

GET http://user:password@goku:9090/path/to
X-Account-ID: 8675309

DELETE http://goku:9090/path/to/remove
Confirmation-Token: 90215
Authorization: Token DEADBEEF

Targets with custom bodies

POST http://goku:9090/things
@/path/to/newthing.json

PATCH http://goku:9090/thing/71988591
@/path/to/thing-71988591.json

Targets with custom bodies and headers

POST http://goku:9090/things
X-Account-ID: 99
@/path/to/newthing.json

Add comments

Lines starting with # are ignored.

# get a dragon ball
GET http://goku:9090/path/to/dragon?item=ball
# specify a test accout
X-Account-ID: 99

-h2c

Specifies that HTTP2 requests are to be sent over TCP without TLS encryption.

-header

Specifies a request header to be used in all targets defined, see -targets. You can specify as many as needed by repeating the flag.

-http2

Specifies whether to enable HTTP/2 requests to servers which support it.

-insecure

Specifies whether to ignore invalid server TLS certificates.

-keepalive

Specifies whether to reuse TCP connections between HTTP requests.

-key

Specifies the PEM encoded TLS client certificate private key file to be used with HTTPS requests.

-laddr

Specifies the local IP address to be used.

-lazy

Specifies whether to read the input targets lazily instead of eagerly. This allows streaming targets into the attack command and reduces memory footprint. The trade-off is one of added latency in each hit against the targets.

-max-body

Specifies the maximum number of bytes to capture from the body of each response. Remaining unread bytes will be fully read but discarded. Set to -1 for no limit. It knows how to intepret values like these:

• "10 MB" -> 10MB
• "10240 g" -> 10TB
• "2000" -> 2000B
• "1tB" -> 1TB
• "5 peta" -> 5PB
• "28 kilobytes" -> 28KB
• "1 gigabyte" -> 1GB

-name

Specifies the name of the attack to be recorded in responses.

-output

Specifies the output file to which the binary results will be written to. Made to be piped to the report command input. Defaults to stdout.

-rate

Specifies the request rate per time unit to issue against the targets. The actual request rate can vary slightly due to things like garbage collection, but overall it should stay very close to the specified. If no time unit is provided, 1s is used.

A -rate of 0 or infinity means vegeta will send requests as fast as possible. Use together with -max-workers to model a fixed set of concurrent users sending requests serially (i.e. waiting for a response before sending the next request).

Setting -max-workers to a very high number while setting -rate=0 can result in vegeta consuming too many resources and crashing. Use with care.

-redirects

Specifies the max number of redirects followed on each request. The default is 10. When the value is -1, redirects are not followed but the response is marked as successful.

-resolvers

Specifies custom DNS resolver addresses to use for name resolution instead of the ones configured by the operating system. Works only on non Windows systems.

-root-certs

Specifies the trusted TLS root CAs certificate files as a comma separated list. If unspecified, the default system CAs certificates will be used.

-targets

Specifies the file from which to read targets, defaulting to stdin. See the -format section to learn about the different target formats.

-timeout

Specifies the timeout for each request. The default is 0 which disables timeouts.

-workers

Specifies the initial number of workers used in the attack. The actual number of workers will increase if necessary in order to sustain the requested rate, unless it'd go beyond -max-workers.

-max-workers

Specifies the maximum number of workers used in the attack. It can be used to control the concurrency level used by an attack.

report command

Usage: vegeta report [options] [<file>...]

Outputs a report of attack results.

Arguments:
  <file>  A file with vegeta attack results encoded with one of
          the supported encodings (gob | json | csv) [default: stdin]

Options:
  --type    Which report type to generate (text | json | hist[buckets] | hdrplot).
            [default: text]

  --buckets Histogram buckets, e.g.: '[0,1ms,10ms]'

  --every   Write the report to --output at every given interval (e.g 100ms)
            The default of 0 means the report will only be written after
            all results have been processed. [default: 0]

  --output  Output file [default: stdout]

Examples:
  echo "GET http://:80" | vegeta attack -rate=10/s > results.gob
  echo "GET http://:80" | vegeta attack -rate=100/s | vegeta encode > results.json
  vegeta report results.*

report -type=text

Requests      [total, rate, throughput] 1200, 120.00, 65.87
Duration      [total, attack, wait]     10.094965987s, 9.949883921s, 145.082066ms
Latencies     [min, mean, 50, 95, 99, max]  90.438129ms, 113.172398ms, 108.272568ms, 140.18235ms, 247.771566ms, 264.815246ms
Bytes In      [total, mean]             3714690, 3095.57
Bytes Out     [total, mean]             0, 0.00
Success       [ratio]                   55.42%
Status Codes  [code:count]              0:535  200:665
Error Set:
Get http://localhost:6060: dial tcp 127.0.0.1:6060: connection refused
Get http://localhost:6060: read tcp 127.0.0.1:6060: connection reset by peer
Get http://localhost:6060: dial tcp 127.0.0.1:6060: connection reset by peer
Get http://localhost:6060: write tcp 127.0.0.1:6060: broken pipe
Get http://localhost:6060: net/http: transport closed before response was received
Get http://localhost:6060: http: can't write HTTP request on broken connection

The Requests row shows:

• The total number of issued requests.
• The real request rate sustained during the attack period.
• The throughput of successful requests over the total period.

The Duration row shows:

• The attack time taken issuing all requests (total - wait)
• The wait time waiting for the response to the last issued request (total - attack)
• The total time taken in the attack (attack + wait)

Latency is the amount of time taken for a response to a request to be read (including the -max-body bytes from the response body).

• min is the minimum latency of all requests in an attack.
• mean is the arithmetic mean / average of the latencies of all requests in an attack.
• 50, 90, 95, 99 are the 50th, 90th, 95th and 99th percentiles, respectively, of the latencies of all requests in an attack. To understand more about why these are useful, I recommend this article from @tylertreat.
• max is the maximum latency of all requests in an attack.

The Bytes In and Bytes Out rows shows:

• The total number of bytes sent (out) or received (in) with the request or response bodies.
• The mean number of bytes sent (out) or received (in) with the request or response bodies.

The Success ratio shows the percentage of requests whose responses didn't error and had status codes between 200 and 400 (non-inclusive).

The Status Codes row shows a histogram of status codes. 0 status codes mean a request failed to be sent.

The Error Set shows a unique set of errors returned by all issued requests. These include requests that got non-successful response status code.

report -type=json

All duration like fields are in nanoseconds.

{
  "latencies": {
    "total": 237119463,
    "mean": 2371194,
    "50th": 2854306,
    "90th": 3228223,
    "95th": 3478629,
    "99th": 3530000,
    "max": 3660505,
    "min": 1949582
  },
  "buckets": {
    "0": 9952,
    "1000000": 40,
    "2000000": 6,
    "3000000": 0,
    "4000000": 0,
    "5000000": 2
  },
  "bytes_in": {
    "total": 606700,
    "mean": 6067
  },
  "bytes_out": {
    "total": 0,
    "mean": 0
  },
  "earliest": "2015-09-19T14:45:50.645818631+02:00",
  "latest": "2015-09-19T14:45:51.635818575+02:00",
  "end": "2015-09-19T14:45:51.639325797+02:00",
  "duration": 989999944,
  "wait": 3507222,
  "requests": 100,
  "rate": 101.01010672380401,
  "throughput": 101.00012489812,
  "success": 1,
  "status_codes": {
    "200": 100
  },
  "errors": []
}

In the buckets field, each key is a nanosecond value representing the lower bound of a bucket. The upper bound is implied by the next higher bucket. Upper bounds are non-inclusive. The highest bucket is the overflow bucket; it has no upper bound. The values are counts of how many requests fell into that particular bucket. If the -buckets parameter is not present, the buckets field is omitted.

report -type=hist

Computes and prints a text based histogram for the given buckets. Each bucket upper bound is non-inclusive.

cat results.bin | vegeta report -type='hist[0,2ms,4ms,6ms]'
Bucket         #     %       Histogram
[0,     2ms]   6007  32.65%  ########################
[2ms,   4ms]   5505  29.92%  ######################
[4ms,   6ms]   2117  11.51%  ########
[6ms,   +Inf]  4771  25.93%  ###################

report -type=hdrplot

Writes out results in a format plottable by https://hdrhistogram.github.io/HdrHistogram/plotFiles.html.

Value(ms)  Percentile  TotalCount  1/(1-Percentile)
0.076715   0.000000    0           1.000000
0.439370   0.100000    200         1.111111
0.480836   0.200000    400         1.250000
0.495559   0.300000    599         1.428571
0.505101   0.400000    799         1.666667
0.513059   0.500000    999         2.000000
0.516664   0.550000    1099        2.222222
0.520455   0.600000    1199        2.500000
0.525008   0.650000    1299        2.857143
0.530174   0.700000    1399        3.333333
0.534891   0.750000    1499        4.000000
0.537572   0.775000    1548        4.444444
0.540340   0.800000    1598        5.000000
0.543763   0.825000    1648        5.714286
0.547164   0.850000    1698        6.666667
0.551432   0.875000    1748        8.000000
0.553444   0.887500    1773        8.888889
0.555774   0.900000    1798        10.000000
0.558454   0.912500    1823        11.428571
0.562123   0.925000    1848        13.333333
0.565563   0.937500    1873        16.000000
0.567831   0.943750    1886        17.777778
0.570617   0.950000    1898        20.000000
0.574522   0.956250    1911        22.857143
0.579046   0.962500    1923        26.666667
0.584426   0.968750    1936        32.000000
0.586695   0.971875    1942        35.555556
0.590451   0.975000    1948        40.000000
0.597543   0.978125    1954        45.714286
0.605637   0.981250    1961        53.333333
0.613564   0.984375    1967        64.000000
0.620393   0.985938    1970        71.113640
0.629121   0.987500    1973        80.000000
0.638060   0.989062    1976        91.424392
0.648085   0.990625    1979        106.666667
0.659689   0.992188    1982        128.008193
0.665870   0.992969    1984        142.227279
0.672985   0.993750    1986        160.000000
0.680101   0.994531    1987        182.848784
0.687810   0.995313    1989        213.356091
0.695729   0.996094    1990        256.016385
0.730641   0.996484    1991        284.414107
0.785516   0.996875    1992        320.000000
0.840392   0.997266    1993        365.764448
1.009646   0.997656    1993        426.621160
1.347020   0.998047    1994        512.032770
1.515276   0.998242    1994        568.828214
1.683532   0.998437    1995        639.795266
1.887487   0.998633    1995        731.528895
2.106249   0.998828    1996        853.242321
2.325011   0.999023    1996        1023.541453
2.434952   0.999121    1996        1137.656428
2.544894   0.999219    1996        1280.409731
2.589510   0.999316    1997        1461.988304
2.605192   0.999414    1997        1706.484642
2.620873   0.999512    1997        2049.180328
2.628713   0.999561    1997        2277.904328
2.636394   0.999609    1997        2557.544757
2.644234   0.999658    1997        2923.976608
2.652075   0.999707    1997        3412.969283
2.658916   0.999756    1998        4098.360656
2.658916   0.999780    1998        4545.454545
2.658916   0.999805    1998        5128.205128
2.658916   0.999829    1998        5847.953216
2.658916   0.999854    1998        6849.315068
2.658916   0.999878    1998        8196.721311
2.658916   0.999890    1998        9090.909091
2.658916   0.999902    1998        10204.081633
2.658916   0.999915    1998        11764.705882
2.658916   0.999927    1998        13698.630137
2.658916   0.999939    1998        16393.442623
2.658916   0.999945    1998        18181.818182
2.658916   0.999951    1998        20408.163265
2.658916   0.999957    1998        23255.813953
2.658916   0.999963    1998        27027.027027
2.658916   0.999969    1998        32258.064516
2.658916   0.999973    1998        37037.037037
2.658916   0.999976    1998        41666.666667
2.658916   0.999979    1998        47619.047619
2.658916   0.999982    1998        55555.555556
2.658916   0.999985    1998        66666.666667
2.658916   0.999986    1998        71428.571429
2.658916   0.999988    1998        83333.333333
2.658916   0.999989    1998        90909.090909
2.658916   0.999991    1998        111111.111111
2.658916   0.999992    1998        125000.000000
2.658916   0.999993    1998        142857.142858
2.658916   0.999994    1998        166666.666668
2.658916   0.999995    1998        199999.999999
2.658916   0.999996    1998        250000.000000
2.658916   0.999997    1998        333333.333336
2.658916   0.999998    1998        500000.000013
2.658916   0.999999    1998        999999.999971
2.658916   1.000000    1998        10000000.000000

encode command

Usage: vegeta encode [options] [<file>...]

Encodes vegeta attack results from one encoding to another.
The supported encodings are Gob (binary), CSV and JSON.
Each input file may have a different encoding which is detected
automatically.

The CSV encoder doesn't write a header. The columns written by it are:

  1. Unix timestamp in nanoseconds since epoch
  2. HTTP status code
  3. Request latency in nanoseconds
  4. Bytes out
  5. Bytes in
  6. Error
  7. Base64 encoded response body
  8. Attack name
  9. Sequence number of request

Arguments:
  <file>  A file with vegeta attack results encoded with one of
          the supported encodings (gob | json | csv) [default: stdin]

Options:
  --to      Output encoding (gob | json | csv) [default: json]
  --output  Output file [default: stdout]

Examples:
  echo "GET http://:80" | vegeta attack -rate=1/s > results.gob
  cat results.gob | vegeta encode | jq -c 'del(.body)' | vegeta encode -to gob

plot command

Usage: vegeta plot [options] [<file>...]

Outputs an HTML time series plot of request latencies over time.
The X axis represents elapsed time in seconds from the beginning
of the earliest attack in all input files. The Y axis represents
request latency in milliseconds.

Click and drag to select a region to zoom into. Double click to zoom out.
Choose a different number on the bottom left corner input field
to change the moving average window size (in data points).

Arguments:
  <file>  A file output by running vegeta attack [default: stdin]

Options:
  --title      Title and header of the resulting HTML page.
               [default: Vegeta Plot]
  --threshold  Threshold of data points to downsample series to.
               Series with less than --threshold number of data
               points are not downsampled. [default: 4000]

Examples:
  echo "GET http://:80" | vegeta attack -name=50qps -rate=50 -duration=5s > results.50qps.bin
  cat results.50qps.bin | vegeta plot > plot.50qps.html
  echo "GET http://:80" | vegeta attack -name=100qps -rate=100 -duration=5s > results.100qps.bin
  vegeta plot results.50qps.bin results.100qps.bin > plot.html

Usage: Generated targets

Apart from accepting a static list of targets, Vegeta can be used together with another program that generates them in a streaming fashion. Here's an example of that using the jq utility that generates targets with an incrementing id in their body.

jq -ncM 'while(true; .+1) | {method: "POST", url: "http://:6060", body: {id: .} | @base64 }' | \
  vegeta attack -rate=50/s -lazy -format=json -duration=30s | \
  tee results.bin | \
  vegeta report

Usage: Distributed attacks

Whenever your load test can't be conducted due to Vegeta hitting machine limits such as open files, memory, CPU or network bandwidth, it's a good idea to use Vegeta in a distributed manner.

In a hypothetical scenario where the desired attack rate is 60k requests per second, let's assume we have 3 machines with vegeta installed.

Make sure open file descriptor and process limits are set to a high number for your user on each machine using the ulimit command.

We're ready to start the attack. All we need to do is to divide the intended rate by the number of machines, and use that number on each attack. Here we'll use pdsh for orchestration.

$ PDSH_RCMD_TYPE=ssh pdsh -b -w '10.0.1.1,10.0.2.1,10.0.3.1' \
    'echo "GET http://target/" | vegeta attack -rate=20000 -duration=60s > result.bin'

After the previous command finishes, we can gather the result files to use on our report.

$ for machine in 10.0.1.1 10.0.2.1 10.0.3.1; do
    scp $machine:~/result.bin $machine.bin &
  done

The report command accepts multiple result files. It'll read and sort them by timestamp before generating reports.

vegeta report *.bin

Usage: Real-time Analysis

If you are a happy user of iTerm, you can integrate vegeta with jplot using jaggr to plot a vegeta report in real-time in the comfort of your terminal:

echo 'GET http://localhost:8080' | \
    vegeta attack -rate 5000 -duration 10m | vegeta encode | \
    jaggr @count=rps \
          hist\[100,200,300,400,500\]:code \
          p25,p50,p95:latency \
          sum:bytes_in \
          sum:bytes_out | \
    jplot rps+code.hist.100+code.hist.200+code.hist.300+code.hist.400+code.hist.500 \
          latency.p95+latency.p50+latency.p25 \
          bytes_in.sum+bytes_out.sum

Usage (Library)

The library versioning follows SemVer v2.0.0. Since lib/v9.0.0, the library and cli are versioned separately to better isolate breaking changes to each component.

See Versioning for more details on git tag naming schemes and compatibility with go mod.

package main

import (
  "fmt"
  "time"

  vegeta "github.com/tsenart/vegeta/v12/lib"
)

func main() {
  rate := vegeta.Rate{Freq: 100, Per: time.Second}
  duration := 4 * time.Second
  targeter := vegeta.NewStaticTargeter(vegeta.Target{
    Method: "GET",
    URL:    "http://localhost:9100/",
  })
  attacker := vegeta.NewAttacker()

  var metrics vegeta.Metrics
  for res := range attacker.Attack(targeter, rate, duration, "Big Bang!") {
    metrics.Add(res)
  }
  metrics.Close()

  fmt.Printf("99th percentile: %s\n", metrics.Latencies.P99)
}

Limitations

There will be an upper bound of the supported rate which varies on the machine being used. You could be CPU bound (unlikely), memory bound (more likely) or have system resource limits being reached which ought to be tuned for the process execution. The important limits for us are file descriptors and processes. On a UNIX system you can get and set the current soft-limit values for a user.

$ ulimit -n # file descriptors
2560
$ ulimit -u # processes / threads
709

Just pass a new number as the argument to change it.

License

See LICENSE.

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