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OpenText Professional Performance Engineering (LoadRunner Professional) vs SmartBear LoadNinja comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

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 Professional Perfo...
Ranking in Performance Testing Tools
4th
Ranking in Load Testing Tools
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
82
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SmartBear LoadNinja
Ranking in Performance Testing Tools
14th
Ranking in Load Testing Tools
11th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Performance Testing Tools category, the mindshare of OpenText Professional Performance Engineering (LoadRunner Professional) is 12.7%, down from 12.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SmartBear LoadNinja is 2.5%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Performance Testing Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
OpenText Professional Performance Engineering (LoadRunner Professional)12.7%
SmartBear LoadNinja2.5%
Other84.8%
Performance Testing Tools
 

Featured Reviews

SD
Assistant Consultant at Tata Consultancy
Experience a decade of seamless performance with robust support
I would like to improve OpenText LoadRunner Professional based on what we discussed in our last discussion, as those points remain similar and applicable. For future updates, I would like to see the same features that people generally prefer. I find that AI functionality in OpenText LoadRunner Professional should be improved and more accessible; if we get a chance to work with that, then we can check how much it helps.
Kapil Tarka - PeerSpot reviewer
Test Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Easy to use with good documentation and helpful support
It's a new tool when I compare it with LoadViewer and HP LoadRunner. It needs time to mature. For example, it needs to improve concurrency. When you run a test suite, your scripts will generate some test data. If we are running a banking application and then we are running a full end-to-end suite, there are many actions that need testing. There's a lot of data getting generated. There should be a variable that we can store for later in our later test cases. We need data management and dynamic data generation to be able to capture the data which is generated.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would definitely recommend OpenText LoadRunner Professional to other users."
"The tool's most valuable features are scripting and automation."
"LoadRunner is a very systematic tool for anyone to use. Even someone who is actually a first time user of LoadRunner can actually get a lot of benefit out of the tool."
"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 stability of Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional is very high. It is the leading tool for stability."
"A very comprehensive tool that is good for performance testing."
"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 most valuable feature is the ability to create performance test cases quickly and then execute them. It provides a lot of powerful features to do that very efficiently and effectively."
"It's a very simple tool for performance testing."
"SmartBear LoadNinja is easy to use and implement."
"We are happy with the technical support."
 

Cons

"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."
"I would like to have better support for adding more users per load generator."
"The solution lacks some form of integration."
"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."
"I would like the solution to include monitoring capacity."
"LoadRunner experiences high resource utilization. Even though we have machines with higher configurations, I've observed this behavior. Heavy traffic recording results in the tool hanging. So heavy traffic recording makes the tool slow."
"I recently just got to see LoadRunner Developer, but it is still not fully developed to use."
"Support for Microsoft Dynamics needs improvement."
"On a smaller scale, there will be no budget issues, but as we expand to a larger user base, I believe we will face some pricing challenges."
"As we ran the test, we couldn't see the real-time results of how the solution behaved for 200 to 400 virtual users."
"It needs time to mature."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"When you compare the cost of other tools such as NeoLoad and LoadNinja, the cost of LoadRunner is on the expensive side. As a result, we are currently considering going with NeoLoad."
"OpenText LoadRunner Enterprise's pricing is reasonable."
"The solution's pricing is expensive."
"The price is a bit on the high side, but it is still affordable."
"I would rate the solution's pricing a nine out of ten."
"The pricing model, especially when involving partners, could use some improvement."
"LoadRunner Professional is an expensive product."
"Certainly, the cost could be reduced."
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Comparison Review

it_user104961 - PeerSpot reviewer
Penetration and Neoload Tester at a university with 501-1,000 employees
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
12%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Government
6%
Healthcare Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
13%
University
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise66
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?
I have mentioned many advantages about this product, but to discuss disadvantages or areas that could be improved, I would need to consult with my engineers who are working on it. So far I have not...
Ask a question
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Also Known As

Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional, Micro Focus LoadRunner, HPE LoadRunner, LoadRunner
SmartBear LoadComplete
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

JetBlue, GOME, Australian Red Cross Blood Service, RMIT University, Virgin Media
Falafel Software
Find out what your peers are saying about OpenText Professional Performance Engineering (LoadRunner Professional) vs. SmartBear LoadNinja and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,108 professionals have used our research since 2012.