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Section 1 · k6 performance testing fundamentals

Account and tooling requirements for the journey

Estimated time: 2 min

What you’ll need

  • Grafana Cloud account: Free tier is enough. Create an account if you need one. Use it to sign in and open k6 dashboards. A path will prompt you to authorize the CLI.
  • JavaScript basics: Variables, functions, imports. Nothing advanced. If you can read code, you can follow.
  • Code editor: Visual Studio Code or Cursor recommended.
  • Terminal access: Command line interface for running k6.

If JavaScript feels rusty

The paths use small scripts you can follow line by line. If you prefer help authoring or refactoring JavaScript, use Grafana Assistant in k6 Script Authoring mode in Grafana Cloud:

  1. On the main menu, click Testing & synthetics > Performance.
  2. Click the Assistant icon at the top of the sidebar to open the Grafana Assistant.
  3. In the mode selector at the bottom of the Assistant panel, choose k6 Script Authoring.

Grafana Assistant must be enabled on your stack; contact your administrator if you do not see Assistant. Refer to Use k6 Script Authoring mode for workflows, prompts, and limitations.

Example prompt (paste into Assistant, then treat the reply as a draft, not the final script):

Create a minimal k6 HTTP test for https://quickpizza.grafana.com that checks for a 200 response, uses sleep(1) between iterations, and runs for 10 iterations.

Compare whatever Assistant returns with the script.js in the path before you run k6 run. Wording and structure can vary by stack and model version, so this journey does not embed a fixed generated script here.

Installed during the journey

You don’t need to install these in advance. The first path covers installation.

The first path installs k6, the performance testing CLI. The same binary sends results to Grafana Cloud. The paths cover login or a token when you need it. Refer to install k6 and Grafana Cloud k6 for details.

No test environment needed

You’ll test against QuickPizza. It’s a Grafana-maintained demo. You don’t need staging or production access to finish the paths.

Other entry points

Not starting from install and baseline? Use these instead: