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OpenText LoadRunner Professional vs OpenText Silk Performer comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

OpenText LoadRunner Profess...
Ranking in Load Testing Tools
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
80
Ranking in other categories
Performance Testing Tools (3rd)
OpenText Silk Performer
Ranking in Load Testing Tools
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Load Testing Tools category, the mindshare of OpenText LoadRunner Professional is 11.9%, down from 15.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenText Silk Performer is 0.8%, down from 1.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Load Testing Tools
 

Featured Reviews

HelenSague - PeerSpot reviewer
A sophisticated tool that supports many languages and works with all kinds of applications
I do not have any big challenges with LoadRunner. I only have some issues with load generators. It is a very common issue, and I hope it will be resolved in the latest release. For example, when we start to run our tests, users get the message that the load generator exceeded 80% of the CPU utilization. Even when the number of users is less, we get these messages. I am trying to resolve it, but it is not going. It is annoying. It is not a failure, but I hope that it will be resolved. IBM WebSphere MQ testing can be a bit challenging. It can handle that, but I hope that they will build more and more capabilities. We do a huge amount of testing for messaging. Just like aviation, the railway industry is based on messaging. There is messaging to build trains and messaging to create some bills. There are many train movements. Everything involves messaging. I wish that it will be developed more for IBM WebSphere testing. Monitoring is okay, but for testing, I currently have to create Java users. I have to load a lot of libraries from IBM WebSphere and so on.
SR
Scripting and basic test executions are good features; configuring the workload for tests is easy
In terms of areas of improvement, I would say the Silk Performance Explorer tool, which is used for monitoring and analysis, can be improved because that's where we spend most of our time when we're analyzing the test data. Any enhancements that can be provided in the monitoring sphere would be useful. When you have a large amount of data the tool struggles with it and will sometimes crash, or there may be issues with too many metrics being collected when running a test. The interface for the scripting could be more feature-rich. Integration with tools like Prometheus or Grafana where we can visualize the data would be great. As things stand, we have to use one monitoring tool to visualize data and another for visualizing the test metrics. Integration would enable us to see the metrics from Silk and correlate that with the metrics from other servers or other processes we're monitoring. It would save having to look at Silk data and server metrics separately. It's the way things are going with newer tools. I think the solution is being phased out by Micro Focus and their emphasis is focused more on LoadRunner. We haven't seen much development in the last few years.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most important feature for us is that it supports a lot of protocols because we support all of them, including HTTP, FTP, mainframe, and others."
"The most valuable features of Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional are the separate module for scripting, execution analysis, and integration with a lot of new things pipeline areas. They keep updating their releases. Recently, they have released different versions, such as the professional and enterprise. They're coming up with new features which are good."
"The reporting mechanism is a valuable feature that generates good reports."
"I recommend LoadRunner Professional as it supports many protocols and applications and is very easy to set up and use."
"The reporting is very good in regard to scripting and debugging."
"I like the user interface. I like the way we can divide our scenarios and can tune them. The integration with the quality center is great. These features are really good."
"The capabilities and flexibility of the Controller, the ability to monitor the systems under test, and the comprehensive results Analysis which saves a great deal of time."
"Scaling is definitely one of the best features of this solution. There are no issues scaling to 10,000 or 20,000 concurrent users."
"A good monitoring tool, simple to script and easy to configure."
 

Cons

"On a scale of one to ten, where one is low, and ten is high-quality technical support, I rate the support a one."
"The flexibility could be improved."
"The only scenario we see a complexity is when we have single-page applications where JavaScript is talking to the server and coming back. That's the only scenario where we find some difficulties."
"I would like the solution to include monitoring capacity."
"There should be more integration with more open-source platforms."
"In terms of improvement, it lacks mobile testing features present in some competitors, like GitMatters, which I find valuable."
"The pricing model, selling model, and business model need to be adjusted. For non-enterprise organizations, Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional is too expensive and not worth the cost."
"I also use the TrueClient feature for browser-based testing. I found the TrueClient feature to be a bit difficult to use and not very user-friendly for automating scripts."
"If you have a large amount of data, the solution can struggle."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing model, especially when involving partners, could use some improvement."
"OpenText LoadRunner Enterprise's pricing is reasonable."
"There is an annual license required to use Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional. There are not any additional costs other than the licensing fees to use it."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is low and ten is a high price, I rate the solution a five."
"It is competing with other products that may cost significantly less or may be available as open-source. Because of that it is relatively expensive."
"It is a high-cost investment, particularly for companies with small budgets or limited testing needs."
"The cost depends greatly on the needs of the testing engagement."
"There is a licensing cost that is expensive."
Information not available
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Comparison Review

it_user104961 - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 13, 2014
LoadRunner vs NeoLoad
The six phases of an IT project Enthusiasm Disillusionment Panic Search for the guilty Punishment of the innocent (the performance tester) Praise and rewards for the incompetent non-participants This article has been put together as part of an evaluation of the performance test tools NeoLoad and…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
17%
Insurance Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional?
When designing a workload model offers a good range of possibilities for creating goal-oriented scenarios, which helps us understand and meet SLAs.
What needs improvement with Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional?
Technical support needs to be faster, and the pricing should be more competitive. The virtual table server feature should be reintroduced. Some AI capabilities should be added. There should be an '...
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Also Known As

Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional, Micro Focus LoadRunner, HPE LoadRunner, LoadRunner
Micro Focus Silk Performer, Silk Performer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

JetBlue, GOME, Australian Red Cross Blood Service, RMIT University, Virgin Media
University of Colorado, Medidata, Monash University
Find out what your peers are saying about Apache, Tricentis, OpenText and others in Load Testing Tools. Updated: January 2025.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.