Smoke testing an API endpoint or flow

What a smoke test is

A smoke test is the smallest useful run: one simulated user, for up to a minute, doing exactly what the real test would do.

It is not a performance test. It is the check you run before a performance test, to find the things that would waste a bigger run — a wrong URL, an expired token, an assertion that never passes, a scenario whose second step depends on something the first did not return.

When to run one

• Immediately after building a request or a scenario, before running anything larger.
• After changing credentials, a base URL, or an environment.
• In CI on every deploy, where it costs almost nothing and catches a broken endpoint early.

What to read in the report

The status

The single check is whether the response matched the status you expected. If it did not, nothing else matters yet.

What the run details say

A failed smoke test usually fails for a plain reason — DNS, a certificate, a refused connection — and the report names it in words.

Response time, loosely

One user tells you the floor: the best the endpoint will ever do. Everything under load is measured against it.

Running one in Stabula

Build the request in the editor — URL, headers, auth, body — choose Smoke Test, and the settings below are filled in for you. Change any of them; the load profile under them redraws, and the estimate says what the run will cost against your month's allowance before you start it.

The run itself happens in an isolated container on our infrastructure, not in your browser, and the report is written in sentences rather than percentiles alone: which targets were met, which checks failed, and what the runner hit — grouped by cause and host.