Vegeta vs Locust

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.

VegetaLocust

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

Platforms

API

APIWeb

Fits teams

Solo / side projectStartupScale-up / mid-market

StartupScale-up / mid-marketEnterprise

Adoption

Established

OSS community · since 2013

Widely used

OSS community · since 2011

Strengths

Constant-rate model avoids the coordinated-omission problem that distorts VU-based tools.
Single static binary, trivial to run anywhere.
Composable output for scripting and pipelines.

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

Backend engineers who want rigorous constant-rate measurements of an endpoint.

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

All of these integrate with: Prometheus, Docker, GitHub Actions.

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