AWS CodeBuild CI/CD with BrowserStack Load Testing

Integrate BrowserStack Load Testing into AWS CodeBuild projects to run load tests as part of your AWS-native CI/CD workflows.

You can add BrowserStack Load Testing to your AWS CodeBuild projects so that every build triggers a load test.

Prerequisites

Make sure you have the following before you start:

• A BrowserStack account with access to Load Testing.
• An AWS account with permissions to create CodeBuild projects and AWS Secrets Manager secrets.
• A source repository (CodeCommit, GitHub, GitHub Enterprise, Bitbucket, or Amazon S3) for CodeBuild to pull from.
• BrowserStack credentials stored in AWS Secrets Manager. You can find the credentials on your account’s profile page:
  • BROWSERSTACK_USERNAME: Your BrowserStack username.
  • BROWSERSTACK_ACCESS_KEY: Your BrowserStack access key.

To store the credentials in AWS Secrets Manager:

1. Open the AWS Secrets Manager console.
2. Click Store a new secret → Other type of secret.
3. Add two key-value pairs:
   • Key: BROWSERSTACK_USERNAME, Value: your BrowserStack username.
   • Key: BROWSERSTACK_ACCESS_KEY, Value: your BrowserStack access key.
4. On the next screen, set the secret name to browserstack/loadtest.
5. Save.

To create the CodeBuild project:

1. Open the AWS CodeBuild console → Create build project.
2. Source: connect your source repository.
3. Environment: Managed image → Ubuntu standard 7.0 (on-demand).
4. Service role: create a new role; ensure the role has secretsmanager:GetSecretValue permission for the secret ARN created above.
5. Buildspec: choose Use a buildspec file with the default filename buildspec.yml.
6. Save and trigger a build.

AWS CodeBuild buildspec

Use the following AWS CodeBuild buildspec to download the BrowserStack CLI, run a sample Playwright-based load test, and upload JUnit XML reports as a build artifact. Save it at the repository root as buildspec.yml.

version: 0.2

env:
  variables:
    BROWSERSTACK_RUN: "true"
  secrets-manager:
    BROWSERSTACK_USERNAME: browserstack/loadtest:BROWSERSTACK_USERNAME
    BROWSERSTACK_ACCESS_KEY: browserstack/loadtest:BROWSERSTACK_ACCESS_KEY

phases:
  install:
    runtime-versions:
      nodejs: 20
    commands:
      - apt-get update -qq && apt-get install -y -qq curl unzip ca-certificates
  pre_build:
    commands:
      - echo "Running unit tests"
  build:
    commands:
      - |
        OS=$(uname -s); ARCH=$(uname -m)
        [ "$OS" = "Darwin" ] && OS=macos || OS=linux
        case "$ARCH" in *arm*) ARCH=arm64 ;; *) ARCH=x64 ;; esac
        curl -fL "https://load-api.browserstack.com/api/v1/binary?os=${OS}&arch=${ARCH}" -o browserstack-cli.zip
        unzip -oq browserstack-cli.zip
        chmod +x browserstack-cli
      - |
        curl -L https://github.com/browserstack/browserstack-playwright-load-testing-sample/archive/refs/heads/CI/CD-Sample-Playwright.tar.gz \
          | tar -xz --strip-components=1
      - ./browserstack-cli load run

artifacts:
  files:
    - reports-*/browserstack-load-test-report-*.xml
  name: load-test-report-$CODEBUILD_BUILD_NUMBER
  discard-paths: no

Result

When this build runs, it:

• Downloads the BrowserStack CLI for the current runner OS and architecture.
• Fetches the BrowserStack Playwright load-testing sample project.
• Starts a BrowserStack Load Testing run using BrowserStack credentials pulled from AWS Secrets Manager.
• Uploads the generated JUnit XML reports as a build artifact named load-test-report-<build-number>.

Notes

• The buildspec uses AWS Secrets Manager for credentials. If you prefer AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store, swap the secrets-manager: block for parameter-store: with the corresponding parameter names.
• For projects that don’t use Secrets Manager, you can also set BROWSERSTACK_USERNAME and BROWSERSTACK_ACCESS_KEY directly in the CodeBuild project’s environment variables (least secure; credentials are visible to anyone with project read access).
• Ensure the CodeBuild service role has secretsmanager:GetSecretValue permission for the secret ARN. Without this, the build fails at the install phase with a “secret not authorized” error.
• The default Ubuntu 7.0 image runs on Linux x64. If you need ARM or Windows, switch the Environment image at project setup time.