Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

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
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
80
Ranking in other categories
Performance Testing Tools (4th)
OpenText Silk Performer
Ranking in Load Testing Tools
14th
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 March 2025, in the Load Testing Tools category, the mindshare of OpenText LoadRunner Professional is 12.0%, down from 14.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenText Silk Performer is 0.9%, down from 1.8% 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 tool's most valuable features are scripting and automation."
"The most valuable feature depends on what we're doing at the time. In the past, the greatest feature was the ability to record and play back to produce a script. Another great feature is that we can monitor the system. They also support many protocols to perform load testing."
"The initial setup and installation of the software were very easy and straightforward."
"There are various languages that they allow those programs to be written in, whether you want to use Java or something else."
"The stability of Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional is very high. It is the leading tool for stability."
"I am impressed with the tool's correlation function."
"Very useful for finding out how the system responds to load, stress, and normal situations, as well as benchmarking with other industry competitors. It also improved our response time, memory delegation, and CPU delegation. In addition, we used LoadRunner to optimize our database and website."
"The implementation was very straightforward and not an issue."
"A good monitoring tool, simple to script and easy to configure."
 

Cons

"There's a reporting part of the cloud that could be improved a little bit."
"The flexibility could be improved."
"In terms of resource management, you need a lot of high capacity boxes if you need to generate a load of 1,000 or 2,000 users."
"The initial start-up of Micro Focus LoadRunner could be improved. When we add 20 or 30 scripts, the refresh is completed one by one. I would like to be able to select all the script at one time, so it can be completed in a single click, reducing the time required."
"We still have some issues with integration with things like SiteScope which, obviously, being another HPE product should be very straightforward, but there are always issues around that."
"I would like them to lower the licensing cost and provide better support."
"Instead of having too many graphs and tabs, use the analysis section to get a more simplified defect analysis."
"The product is pretty heavy and should be more lightweight."
"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."
"The licensing of Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional could improve. If it can be easier and the concurrent run can be included with the current total number of users, it would be helpful."
"LoadRunner is more expensive than some competing products."
"Pricing depends on our choices because it depends on what type of protocol we are getting, what type of licensing we are getting, and what kind of relationships we have with HP and Micro Focus."
"The fee for LoadRunner Professional is very high - about US$500 per user."
"It is reasonable. We pay the cost, but we have everything. We have a big set of licenses for SAP and other applications. We have all kinds of licenses."
"For licensing, we pay a lot for it. But the incentive is the support we get with it, that we pay once, and we are set."
"The licensing fees are based on the number of users."
Information not available
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Load Testing Tools solutions are best for your needs.
842,690 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
18%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
29%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Insurance Company
4%
 

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 '...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

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, Perforce and others in Load Testing Tools. Updated: March 2025.
842,690 professionals have used our research since 2012.