Is k6 worth the price?
k6 open source is excellent for load testing.
Grafana Cloud k6 adds convenience with reasonable pricing.
Pricing Plans
Free TrialOpen Source
Free
Self-hosted
- Unlimited VUs locally
- Full feature set
- CLI tool
- JavaScript scripting
Grafana Cloud Free
Free
Cloud hosted
- 500 VUh/month
- 14-day retention
- Basic reporting
- Up to 50 concurrent VUs
Pro
$0.15/per VUh
Plus base plan
- 30-day retention
- Advanced reporting
- 8×5 support
- Higher limits
Enterprise
$25,000/year minimum
Volume pricing
- Volume discounts
- Custom SLA
- Dedicated support
- Custom retention
Hidden Costs & Gotchas
Browser-based tests 10x cost
Enterprise minimum $25K/year
Which Plan Do You Need?
Developers
DevOps teams
Performance engineers
CI/CD pipelines
Our Recommendation
startup
Use open source locally or free cloud tier. Pay only for large-scale tests.
enterprise
Enterprise for volume discounts and SLA.
How k6 Compares to Competitors
Locust is also free/open source. JMeter is free but heavier. k6 is most developer-friendly.
k6 Pricing FAQ
How much does k6 cost?
k6 starts at $2083.33/month on the Enterprise plan. A free plan is also available with limited features.
Does k6 have a free plan?
Yes. k6 offers a free plan called "Open Source". It includes: Unlimited VUs locally, Full feature set, CLI tool.
Does k6 offer a free trial?
Yes, k6 offers a free trial. No credit card is typically required to start the trial, though this may vary.
Is there a cheaper alternative to k6?
Yes. Popular alternatives to k6 include Gatling, BlazeMeter, Locust. Free alternatives include Gatling, BlazeMeter, Locust. Compare them side-by-side on Toolradar.
Cheaper alternatives to k6
3 of 3 direct competitors below offer a free plan. Per-seat pricing varies up to 60% across this set.
