What is the main difference between load and stress Testing

Load and stress testing which comes under the division of Performance testing. Most
of us have some confusions regarding these two type of testing. Here I tried to
describe the difference between load and stress testing in simple manner.

Load Testing

In load testing our intention is to confirm that the application can withstand the load that is mentioned in SRS. Here we tested only with the specified number of load mentioned in the 'Requirement' doc.

For eg: There is a client requirement that, the application should handle 100 users
simultaneous logins at a time. In this testing we will test for 100 users and check how
the application behaves at this stage.

Stress Testing

Stress testing is to be done to determine the breaking point of the application, by applying stress testing, at which point the application crashes. Here the application will be tested with more than the load specified in the SRS. So the testing is to be done to find out the maximum load the application can accommodate.

Consider the same example above, in stress testing we will give more than 100 users
and find out the break point and analyse maximum load the application can withstand.

I hope the above description was helpful for you.Thank you.