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hey

hey is a tiny Apache-2.0 HTTP load generator written in Go, originally called boom, used as a simple replacement for ApacheBench (ab).

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Introduction

hey is a tiny program that sends load to a web application. It was originally called boom, influenced by Tarek Ziade’s tool of the same name, and was renamed to hey to avoid confusion. It is widely used as a quick replacement for ApacheBench (ab).

The source code is at rakyll/hey on GitHub under the Apache-2.0 licence, with about 20,800 stars; the most recent commit was on 10 January 2026.

Features

  1. Request count or duration: Send a fixed number of requests or run for a duration.
  2. Concurrency: Set the number of concurrent workers.
  3. Rate limiting: Limit queries per second per worker.
  4. Latency summary: Response-time histogram and percentiles.
  5. Prebuilt binaries: Downloads for Linux, macOS and Windows.

Pros

  1. Free to use: Open source under Apache-2.0.
  2. Maintained: Commits as recent as 10 January 2026.
  3. Community: About 20,800 GitHub stars.

Cons

  1. Basic scenarios: Single URL per run; no scripting.
  2. Slower development: The last commit was in January 2026; check activity before relying on new features.
hey -n 1000 -c 50 https://staging.example.com/
hey -z 30s -q 10 -c 20 https://staging.example.com/api/health

Resources:

Pricing

hey is free and open source under the Apache-2.0 licence.

  1. Developers wanting a quick load check of one endpoint.
  2. CI smoke performance checks.
  3. Not a fit for multi-step user journeys.

Conclusion

hey is a simple, dependable ab replacement for quick HTTP load checks.

Alternatives

Other tools on CheckOps that cover similar ground. Open a page, or compare one with hey side by side.