# newsapps/beeswithmachineguns

A utility for arming (creating) many bees (micro EC2 instances) to attack (load test) targets (web applications).

Repository: https://github.com/newsapps/beeswithmachineguns
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/beeswithmachineguns
Homepage: http://apps.chicagotribune.com/
Language: Python
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Last push: 2024-03-28T21:15:07+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 32/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 5909, "days_push": 888, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases, no_readme
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 6628, forks 626 (observed 2026-08-28T04:09:45.806772+00:00)

## What it is
Bees with Machine Guns is a Python CLI utility that spins up many micro EC2 instances ('bees') to perform distributed load testing against web applications. It orchestrates the instances to attack a target URL simultaneously and reports the results.

## Use cases
- load test a web application from multiple machines
- stress test an HTTP endpoint with high concurrency
- simulate a traffic spike using EC2 instances
- measure how a web service handles distributed requests
- generate heavy request load against a staging site

## When to choose
- you want a simple, scriptable distributed load test on AWS EC2
- you need to generate more load than a single machine can produce
- you prefer a lightweight Python tool over complex load-testing platforms

## When to avoid
- you are not using AWS or don't want to pay for EC2 instances
- you need rich metrics, scripting of scenarios, or a GUI (consider k6, Locust, or JMeter)
- the project's maintenance pace or Python 2-era design doesn't fit modern workflows

## Facets
- artifact type: cli-tool
- maturity: maintenance
- function: load-testing, cli, cloud
- domain: developer-tools, testing, cloud-computing, performance
- platform: python, cli, cloud
- tags: load-testing, ec2, stress-testing, distributed-testing, python

## Member repositories
- newsapps/beeswithmachineguns (main) score 32

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:45.806772+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T17:43:14.158664+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - registry_pypi: https://pypi.org/pypi/beeswithmachineguns/json (fetched 2026-08-29T08:39:36.153852+00:00, sha e7717ff2199e)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.