# Stress Testing Stress testing is a type of performance testing that evaluates how a system behaves when pushed beyond its normal operating capacity. The goal is to identify the system's breaking point, observe how it fails (gracefully or catastrophically), and verify that it recovers properly once the load subsides. Unlike load testing, which verifies performance under expected traffic volumes, stress testing intentionally exceeds those limits. Testers gradually increase the request rate, number of concurrent connections, or payload sizes until the system degrades or fails. This reveals bottlenecks such as memory leaks, connection pool exhaustion, database lock contention, and inadequate timeout configurations. For API systems, stress testing validates that the API gateway, backend services, and databases can handle traffic spikes without data loss or extended outages. It also verifies that protective mechanisms like rate limiting, circuit breakers, and auto-scaling respond correctly under extreme conditions. Serverless platforms have their own concurrency and rate limits, and stress testing helps teams understand these boundaries and configure appropriate safeguards. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://docs.serverlessapigateway.com/glossary/s/stress-testing.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.