%% Last Updated: - [[2021-02-13]] %% Instead of simulating your busiest time in terms of traffic, like a peak load test, a soak test simulates the effect of a lower but sustained load level. This would be the number of users on your application over several hours. A soak test will typically involve fewer users than a peak load test, but it will usually run from 3 hours to a few days. The goal of a soak test is to see if there is any performance degradation in the application performance over longer periods of time. A common finding from soak tests is that the application has a memory leak, which causes response times to degrade over time as the servers begin to struggle and become more sluggish. This is not something that is always apparent during the quicker peak load tests.