WPLoadTester records HTTP traffic from a desktop Chrome browser running in mobile-emulation mode. That covers mobile websites and hybrid apps (Cordova, Ionic, Capacitor, and similar WebView-wrapped apps). For natively compiled iOS or Android apps, the standard approach is to load-test the backend REST APIs the app consumes.
Open Chrome on your desktop, turn on DevTools Device Mode (the toolbar toggle that switches the viewport to phone or tablet dimensions). Pick a device profile or set a custom viewport. Chrome then renders the page with a mobile viewport, sends a mobile User-Agent header, and emulates touch events for the page.
Drive the mobile website (or your hybrid app’s web content) normally. The WPLoadTester recorder captures the HTTP traffic exactly as it would for any desktop recording: every request, every response header, every body. From there the workflow is the same as any other test case: ASM auto-correlates dynamic state, the Fields View lets you parameterize per-VU values, the engines replay at scale.
What you get is a load test that exercises the backend with traffic shaped the way mobile clients shape it: mobile User-Agent, mobile viewport dimensions in any analytics calls, the same authentication and sync patterns the mobile experience triggers.
If your "mobile app" is a hybrid app or a PWA, the application is fundamentally a mobile website running in a WebView. The HTTP traffic the user generates is HTTP from a web client, just with a mobile-shaped surface. Recording that in desktop Chrome with Device Mode gives you an accurate test case.
WPLoadTester does not record traffic from native compiled apps. If your release exposes a natively compiled iOS or Android app, the standard industry approach is to load-test the backend REST APIs the app consumes, rather than trying to load-simulate the device.
The reasoning is straightforward: the native client and a REST client emit the same HTTP requests to your backend. The backend cannot distinguish them, and the backend is what saturates under load. Load testing the API endpoints exercises the same code paths that fail first when the user count climbs. Use WPLoadTester’s standard API recording and replay workflow for that.
Honest scope, up front:
For device-side instrumentation, native UI testing, or app-store deployment validation, instrumented device-testing tools (Appium, XCUITest, Espresso, Xcode Instruments, Android Profiler) cover ground WPLoadTester does not.
Load-test your mobile-web or hybrid-app backend.
The recorder, Chrome Device Mode workflow, ASM correlation, and Cloud execution ship in WPLoadTester 7. Request the beta to run a mobile-web load test at your target user concurrency, or download the free single-machine edition to evaluate locally.
Comparing tiers? See the Free vs Pro split.