3.7Summary Recommendation

For most modern teams starting fresh, k6 is the default recommendation. It has the best combination of developer experience, CI integration, resource efficiency, and community momentum. Supplement with Locust if you need Python flexibility or a live monitoring UI. Keep JMeter only if you have legacy investments or need non-HTTP protocol support that k6 extensions do not cover.

The most important decision is not which tool you pick -- it is that you integrate performance testing into CI and run it on every deployment.