Load testing is crucial for ensuring the reliability and performance of APIs, particularly as applications grow and user demand increases, potentially outstripping infrastructure capabilities. This tutorial provides a step-by-step guide on how to load test a simple Node.js API using ApacheBench, integrated within a CircleCI continuous integration and deployment pipeline. It covers setting up the API on Heroku, deploying via GitHub, and configuring a CI/CD pipeline to automate deployment and load testing whenever changes are made to the code. The tutorial emphasizes the importance of load testing to prevent outages and maintain customer confidence, while also offering insights into potential improvements in application architecture for scalability. Additionally, the tutorial mentions alternatives to ApacheBench, such as the k6 tool, for extended testing capabilities.