Apache Bench or ab for short, is a command-line tool to perform simple load tests on an HTTP server, be it a website or an API.

By running the following command, you will get an overview of how the server is performing under load:

ab -n 100 -c 10 <url>

So, in this post, I will try to explain how we can use Apache Bench. I will start with how to install it, then proceed on how to use it and the available options, and finally, I explain how to interpret the results.

Let’s get started!

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Installation

One of the advantages of Apache Bench is that you may already have **ab** installed, depending on the OS you are using. For macOS users, it comes pre-installed by default, and if you are using a Linux Distribution, there are a lot of chances that it is also installed as it comes with the **httpd** package. Try to run **ab -help** to verify if that’s the case.

In case it is not installed, you will need to install the **apache2-utils** package. For example, if you are using **Ubuntu** you will have to run:

apt-get update
apt-get install apache2-utils

So, now, that we have Apache Bench installed, let’s see how we can use it and some of the available options.

#apache-bench #load-testing #performance #command-line #testing