{"id":17,"date":"2013-07-03T08:20:25","date_gmt":"2013-07-03T08:20:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/loadfocus.com\/blog\/?p=17"},"modified":"2023-06-19T09:07:24","modified_gmt":"2023-06-19T09:07:24","slug":"what-is-response-time-in-performance-testing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/loadfocus.com\/blog\/2013\/07\/what-is-response-time-in-performance-testing","title":{"rendered":"What is Response Time in Performance Testing?"},"content":{"rendered":"<span class=\"span-reading-time rt-reading-time\" style=\"display: block;\"><span class=\"rt-label rt-prefix\"><\/span> <span class=\"rt-time\"> 2<\/span> <span class=\"rt-label rt-postfix\">minutes read<\/span><\/span><p class=\"lead\"><!-- pn-tldr --><\/p>\n<h2>Key takeaways<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Response time covers the whole round trip, from request sent to the application reporting it done.<\/li>\n<li>An average hides the slow tail, so report the median with a percentile beside it.<\/li>\n<li>A response time only means something next to the load and environment that produced it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><!-- \/pn-tldr --><\/p>\n<h3>Response Time<\/h3>\n<p><strong>Response Time<\/strong> measures the performance of an individual transaction or query. <strong>Response time is the amount of time from the moment that a user sends a request until the time that the application indicates that the request has completed.<\/strong><br \/>\nFor example, let&#8217;s say you have API and you want to find how much time that API call takes to execute once requested, here you are measuring the response time.<br \/>\nResponse time is the total time it takes from when a user makes a request until they receive a response.<\/p>\n<p>When doing a load or performance test you need to find out how is your application, website, API handling all the requests and how the response time increases with the load.<\/p>\n<h3>Response Time Load Testing<\/h3>\n<p>You can use cloud testing tools to run load and performance tests, tools like<strong> <a title=\"Cloud Load Testing\" href=\"https:\/\/loadfocus.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">LoadFocus<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>which is a &#8211; very easy to use and low-cost online service, has accurate results and is compatible with open source Apache JMeter.<!-- pn-faq --><\/p>\n<h2>Frequently Asked Questions<\/h2>\n<h3>What does response time measure?<\/h3>\n<p>The time from a user sending a request to the application indicating it has completed, for one transaction or query.<\/p>\n<h3>Is an average response time enough?<\/h3>\n<p>No. Averages hide the slow tail, so report the median with a percentile such as p95. Users experience individual requests, not your mean.<\/p>\n<h3>What makes response times comparable between runs?<\/h3>\n<p>Measuring the same transaction under the same conditions. Response time is only meaningful next to the load and environment that produced it.<\/p>\n<p><!-- \/pn-faq --><!-- pn-related-reading --><\/p>\n<h2>Related reading<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/loadfocus.com\/blog\/2022\/03\/actively-measure-the-right-key-metrics-during-performance-testing\">How to Measure the Right Key Metrics During Performance Testing<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/loadfocus.com\/blog\/2013\/07\/what-is-throughput-in-performance-testing\">What is Throughput in Performance Testing?<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/loadfocus.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/performance-testing-mistakes-how-to-avoid\">7 Common Performance Testing Mistakes<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"span-reading-time rt-reading-time\" style=\"display: block;\"><span class=\"rt-label rt-prefix\"><\/span> <span class=\"rt-time\"> 2<\/span> <span class=\"rt-label rt-postfix\">minutes read<\/span><\/span>Key takeaways Response time covers the whole round trip, from request sent to the application reporting it done. An average hides the slow tail, so report the median with a percentile beside it. A response time only means something next to the load and environment that produced it. Response Time Response Time measures the performance&#8230;  <a href=\"https:\/\/loadfocus.com\/blog\/2013\/07\/what-is-response-time-in-performance-testing\" class=\"more-link\" title=\"Read What is Response Time in Performance Testing?\">Read more &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3747,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-load-testing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/loadfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/loadfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/loadfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loadfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loadfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/loadfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2597,"href":"https:\/\/loadfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions\/2597"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loadfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/loadfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loadfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loadfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}