Gatling is a high-performance load testing tool designed for analyzing and measuring the performance of web applications, utilizing asynchronous concurrency and I/O through a Scala-based DSL. It enables efficient simulations of user behavior with simplified scenario scripting, allowing for substantial scaling in load testing performance compared to traditional tools like JMeter. Gatling reports provide clear graphical visualizations of test results and can be easily configured and run within a SBT environment.