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Load testing with Playwright

Run a load test using Playwright scripts on BrowserStack Load Testing

Prerequisites

  • BrowserStack Username and Access key. You can find this under your account profile.
  • An existing automated test suite written in Playwright Javascript or Typescript

Use our load testing sample project to quickly get started.

Run a test

Based on your preferred method of performing load tests, use one of the following methods:

You can start a new test either from the Quick Start page, or the Load Tests page on the Load testing dashboard.

On the dashboard, click Create Load Test.

Screenshot of load testing dashboard showing the run a new test button highlighted

Enter a Test Name for your load test, select Browser Only and click Upload scripts

Dashboard showing test name field and type of load test to run

Upload scripts

In this step, upload your Playwright automation project as a ZIP file. Select your framework (for example, Playwright - NodeJS) from the dropdown, then drag and drop your ZIP file (up to 250MB) or click to select it.

Screenshot of load testing dashboard asking to add scripts for load testing

After you upload your ZIP file, the dashboard automatically validates your project. If validation is successful, you will see a confirmation message and a summary of the detected configuration and dependencies.

You can review and confirm the configuration file (your playwright config file) and any other dependencies (path of package.json) identified in your project.

Dashboard showing successful validation of a Playwright project ZIP with config and dependencies

Ensure that your package.json and Playwright config files are placed at the root level of your project.

Once you have verified the configuration, click Configure Load to move to the next step.

You can also run load tests using the sample scripts if you want to try out the feature before uploading your own files.

You can configure the following load parameters to customize your load test:

Run test

After you finish configuring load parameters, click RUN TEST

Set BrowserStack credentials

Save your BrowserStack credentials as environment variables. It simplifies running your test suite from your local or CI environment.

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Download BrowserStack NodeJS SDK

Run the given command to install the BrowserStack NodeJS SDK in your project

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Initialize your project for Load Testing

Run the given command from the root directory of your test project to generate the browserstack-load.yml file which contains the configuration required to define and run your load test:

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Configure your Load Test

Open the generated browserstack-load.yml file and update it with the relevant test details. Here’s a sample configuration:

Specify the test type

testType defines the type of load test that you want to execute. Currently, Playwright, Selenium and WebdriverIO are supported. Set this to Playwright for a load test using Playwright test suite.

Specify the language

Currently, only Playwright with NodeJS is supported so set the language to nodejs.

Specify the path

The files block specifies the key files required to install dependencies and define which tests should be executed.

  • Under dependencies, add the path to files required to set up the environment. For Node.js projects, include the path to your package.json.
  • Under testConfigs, add the path to your configuration file. For Playwright (Node.js), this is usually playwright.config.ts. Make sure your config file includes the testDir option to specify where your test files are located. Use the testMatch option to filter which tests to run using glob patterns or regular expressions.

Headless mode

You can configure your Playwright load tests to run in either headless or headful mode using the headless capability.

  • Headless mode (default): The browser runs without a visible UI, which is faster and consumes fewer resources. Most CI/CD and automated load tests use headless mode.
  • Headful mode: The browser UI remains visible during test execution.

If not specified, tests will run in headless mode by default.

Set reporting structure

Use projectName to group related tests under the same project on the dashboard. Use testName to group multiple runs of the same test.
Both projectName and testName must remain consistent across different runs of the same test.
You can use the following characters in projectName and testName:

  • Letters (A–Z, a–z)
  • Digits (0–9)
  • Periods (.), colons (:), hyphens (-), square brackets ([]), forward slashes (/), at signs (@), ampersands (&), single quotes ('), and underscores (_)
    All other characters are ignored.

You can configure the following load parameters to customize your load test:

browserstack-load.yml
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Run the Load Test

Run the given command to start your tests:

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Check out the FAQs section to get answers to commonly asked questions.

View test results

When the test is run, you’ll get a link to the result dashboard where you can analyze key metrics like:

  • Response time
  • Request throughput
  • Web vitals(LCP, CLS, INP, etc.)
  • Errors and bottlenecks

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