BrowserMob provides on-demand performance and load testing software services for testing websites with real browsers.

The service is built on top of cloud computing networks, such as Amazon EC2. It follows as pay-as-you-go model, where you only have to pay for what you use. Pricing is based on a “user per hour” model. It is a self-service model and users can schedule large scale load tests within minutes of signing up.

It uses real browsers to deliver realistic load scenarios from an external perspective - just like real web visitors do. Traditional load testing tools (commercial and open source) work by simulating the HTTP traffic seen by a browser. For rich, AJAX-based applications, this often requires complex scripting efforts.

BrowserMob bypasses this problem by using automating the browser (rather than the HTTP traffic) and letting the browser make the appropriate HTTP requests. The result is a simple automation script and a more realistic load test.

To do this, however, BrowserMob requires massive amounts of hardware from the cloud. This means it is not suitable for all load testing, particularly for sites that cannot be exposed outside of a private firewall.