Website Stress Tester (Windows)

A simple Windows (WPF) desktop app to generate controllable traffic against a target website in your own isolated environment. It supports fast HTTP-based load as well as “real user”-style headless browser runs.

Disclaimer / Safety

Use this software only against systems you own or where you have explicit written permission to test.

You are responsible for how you use it. Running load tests can cause outages, data loss, unexpected costs, or trigger security systems. This project is provided “as is”, without warranty of any kind, and use is at your own risk.

Features

• UI-driven target configuration (URL, users, duration, ramp-up, think time)
• Two traffic modes
  • HTTP: high-throughput requests (good for capacity/RPS testing)
  • Browser: headless Chromium via Playwright (closer to “real user” behavior)
• Live metrics (active users, total requests, RPS, avg/p95 latency, errors)
• One-click browser runtime install/remove for Browser mode

Requirements

• Windows 10/11 (x64 recommended)
• .NET SDK 8.x

Build (from source)

From the repository root:

dotnet build WebsiteStressTester.sln -c Release

To run from source:

dotnet run --project .\WebsiteStressTester.App\WebsiteStressTester.App.csproj

Publish a Windows EXE

This produces a self-contained single-file executable:

dotnet publish .\WebsiteStressTester.App\WebsiteStressTester.App.csproj `
  -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained true `
  /p:PublishSingleFile=true /p:IncludeNativeLibrariesForSelfExtract=true

Output:

• WebsiteStressTester.App\bin\Release\net8.0-windows\win-x64\publish\WebsiteStressTester.App.exe

Using the App

1. Set Target URL (must be http:// or https://)
2. Set Users (concurrent users to simulate)
3. Set Duration (sec)
   • Use 0 to run until you press Stop
4. Set Ramp-up (sec) to spread user start times
5. Set Think time (ms) to add delay/jitter between actions
6. Choose Mode
   • HTTP for faster request load
   • Browser for headless “real user” traffic
7. If using Browser mode, click Install browsers first (the button toggles to Remove browsers when installed)
8. Click Start

Notes

• Browser runtime is managed by Playwright and is typically stored under %LOCALAPPDATA%\ms-playwright unless PLAYWRIGHT_BROWSERS_PATH is set.
• Browser mode is intentionally heavier than HTTP mode; start with a small number of users and scale up.