---
title: "Add k6 as a CI/CD pipeline step | Grafana Labs"
description: "Configure GitHub Actions or GitLab CI to run k6 automatically using the official setup and run actions or the grafana/k6 image."
---

> For a curated documentation index, see [llms.txt](/llms.txt). For the complete documentation index, see [llms-full.txt](/llms-full.txt).

# Add k6 as a CI/CD pipeline step

Every major CI/CD platform can run k6. For GitHub Actions, Grafana provides two official actions: [`grafana/setup-k6-action`](https://github.com/grafana/setup-k6-action) installs k6, and [`grafana/run-k6-action`](https://github.com/grafana/run-k6-action) executes your scripts. For GitLab CI and other platforms, the portable approach is the `grafana/k6` Docker image.

This milestone uses GitHub Actions as the primary example and includes a GitLab CI variant. The concepts are the same on every platform: run k6, pass environment variables, and let the exit code determine the job result.

To add k6 as a pipeline step, complete the following steps:

1. Commit your parameterized k6 test script to your repository. Place it in a dedicated folder for test scripts:
   
   Bash ![Copy code to clipboard](/media/images/icons/icon-copy-small-2.svg) Copy
   
   ```bash
   mkdir -p tests/performance
   cp test.js tests/performance/test.js
   git add tests/performance/test.js
   git commit -m "Add k6 performance test script"
   ```
2. Create a GitHub Actions workflow file at `.github/workflows/performance.yml`:
   
   YAML ![Copy code to clipboard](/media/images/icons/icon-copy-small-2.svg) Copy
   
   ```yaml
   name: Performance Test
   
   on:
     push:
       branches: [main]
     pull_request:
       branches: [main]
   
   jobs:
     k6-test:
       runs-on: ubuntu-latest
       steps:
         - name: Checkout
           uses: actions/checkout@v4
   
         - name: Setup k6
           uses: grafana/setup-k6-action@v1
   
         - name: Run k6 test
           uses: grafana/run-k6-action@v1
           with:
             path: tests/performance/test.js
             flags: --env BASE_URL=https://staging.example.com
   ```
   
   Replace `https://staging.example.com` with the URL of the environment you want to test. You can also pass `BASE_URL` with a step-level `env:` block instead of `--env` in `flags`.
3. If you use GitLab CI, add the following job to your `.gitlab-ci.yml` instead:
   
   YAML ![Copy code to clipboard](/media/images/icons/icon-copy-small-2.svg) Copy
   
   ```yaml
   performance-test:
     image:
       name: grafana/k6:latest
       entrypoint: ['']
     stage: test
     script:
       - k6 run -e BASE_URL=https://staging.example.com tests/performance/test.js
   ```

> **Tip:** If your CI platform doesn’t have a dedicated k6 action, use the Docker image directly:

Bash ![Copy code to clipboard](/media/images/icons/icon-copy-small-2.svg) Copy

```bash
docker run --rm -e BASE_URL=https://staging.example.com \
  -v "$(pwd)/tests:/tests" grafana/k6:latest run /tests/performance/test.js
```

1. Push your pipeline configuration to trigger a build:
   
   Bash ![Copy code to clipboard](/media/images/icons/icon-copy-small-2.svg) Copy
   
   ```bash
   git add .github/workflows/performance.yml
   git commit -m "Add k6 performance test to pipeline"
   git push
   ```
   
   Your CI platform runs the k6 test as part of the pipeline. The test output appears in the pipeline logs.

In the next milestone, you configure your pipeline to act on the k6 exit code so that threshold breaches block deployments.