There is an abundant supply of performance- and stress-testing tools available on the market today. Some are quite inexpensive, while others are astronomically expensive. Commercial testing products tend to offer more plentiful features, but there’s really no correlation between cost and quality when it comes to these types of tools. For most applications, you don’t need to spend an arm and a leg on a testing tool when there are free or cheaper ones that will do the job. The best advice is to start out with one of the free or inexpensive tools and see if it meets the project’s needs. If not, take a look at one of the more expensive commercial products to see what it has to offer. Table 17-1 lists several performance- and stress-testing tools.