Recently I discovered Gatling, a load testing framework written in Scala, and used it to test a Kentico 7 web site. I love it so much that I’ll ditch Apache JMeter from now on.

While both have a GUI to record tests, the major difference between them is JMeter tests are saved as .jmx files (XML), but Gatling tests are .scala scripts written in Scala-based DSL.

Another interesting option would be Ruby JMeter, but I haven’t had a chance to try it yet.

This blog from flood.io points out that Gatling outperformances JMeter with over 20,000 concurrent users.

I must admit, however, that Gatling stil has a few rough edges, at least on Windows. For example, some of my tests couldn’t finish because a report file’s file name was too long for Windows (260 characters maximum).

Additionally, Gatling’s QuickStart documentation warns:

• We ask you to not use a path containing spaces, as this can cause issues.
• For Windows users, we also recommend that you do not place Gatling in the Programs folder as there may be permission issues.