Locust vs autocannon

Feature checklists rarely decide anything. What decides it is the pricing metric, who has to write the tests, and which limitation you can live with.

Locustautocannon

Entry price

Free and open source

Open source

Free and open source

Open source

What drives the bill

The metric that actually scales your invoice.

Free and open source. You pay in engineering time and CI minutes.

Free tier

Everything, self-hosted

Open source

MIT

Self-hostable

No-code authoring

Languages

Python

JavaScript

Platforms

APIWeb

API

Fits teams

StartupScale-up / mid-marketEnterprise

Solo / side projectStartup

Adoption

Widely used

OSS community · since 2011

Established

OSS community · since 2016

Strengths

Test scenarios are plain Python, so any logic is expressible without workarounds.
Distributed mode is conceptually simple and works well on Kubernetes.
Live web UI is useful during an exploratory ramp-up.

Limitations

Python's per-user overhead is higher than k6 or Gatling; big loads need more machines.
Reporting is basic — plan on exporting to Grafana.
HTTP-centric; other protocols require writing your own client.

Best for

Python teams who want load scenarios expressed in their own language.

Quick endpoint benchmarks and micro-optimisation work.

All of these integrate with: GitHub Actions.

Pricing last reviewed August 2026 and is indicative only — confirm on each vendor’s own page.