Load testing where you’re not allowed to load test

Managed WordPress hosts often block external load-testing tools. MicroChaos runs inside WordPress instead. It simulates logged-in users, WooCommerce flows, REST endpoints and custom paths, and compares each result with a baseline, so a change that slows the site down shows up. It’s a public GPL-3.0 project on GitHub.

It’s mine. I wrote it in my own time, outside work, and the original repo is my personal one. The README mentions Pressable, a managed WordPress host; their version is a fork of mine.

• Sustained load from inside WordPress.It fires bursts of requests at a rotation of endpoints for a set duration, logs resource use, and compares each run with a baseline. There’s also a progressive mode that steps concurrency up until response time, error rate or memory crosses a threshold.
• Honest about its limits.On managed hosts that cap loopback traffic, you get about ten concurrent requests, so tests effectively run in serial and progressive mode hits the cap before it finds true capacity. The README says so, and lists what the tool can’t show there.
• Built for the person doing the work.Support engineers, QA and developers can run it from the command line on staging. No external traffic, no extra service to set up.

Most WordPress developers never work on the hosting side: caching, resource use, how a site behaves under sustained load. I wrote a tool for it, and I bring the same view to an audit.

Related: audits and speed, white-label work for agencies and WordPress rescue.