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OpenText LoadRunner Professional vs SmartBear LoadNinja comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 6, 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 LoadRunner Profess...
Ranking in Performance Testing Tools
4th
Ranking in Load Testing Tools
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
80
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SmartBear LoadNinja
Ranking in Performance Testing Tools
11th
Ranking in Load Testing Tools
12th
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 April 2025, in the Performance Testing Tools category, the mindshare of OpenText LoadRunner Professional is 13.0%, down from 14.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SmartBear LoadNinja is 1.5%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Performance 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.
Kapil Tarka - PeerSpot reviewer
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

"It provides clients with an understanding of application and system performance."
"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."
"The ability to do multithreading. That's available in any performance testing tool, but the number of protocols that this particular tool supports has been very good."
"The front loader and the reporting features are the most valuable aspects of OpenText LoadRunner Professional."
"One of the most valuable features of LoadRunner Professional is the wide range of protocols it supports, especially the web user v user types."
"The most useful aspect of the solution is that it provides agents in different geographic locations."
"We don't find any features lacking. One of the most beneficial points we have from LoadRunner is we start sizing our infrastructure accordingly. So what we do is when we deploy a new workload, we do performance testing."
"It uses high-level languages like Java, CVC, and CCL."
"We are happy with the technical support."
"It's a very simple tool for performance testing."
"SmartBear LoadNinja is easy to use and implement."
 

Cons

"Sometimes we are not be able to click on some of the buttons due to the screen mismatching and compatibility issues."
"I would like them to lower the licensing cost and provide better support."
"The monitoring technology in LoadRunner could be improved. It depends on another tool called SiteScope, but they only took a part of the features of SiteScope. They need to improve on that."
"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."
"The product is pretty heavy and should be more lightweight."
"I would like to have better support for adding more users per load generator."
"Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional can improve the implementation of digital areas, such as digital testing, UI and native application, and native mobile applications."
"Micro Focus has two separate products for web and mobile applications, which means you have to invest in both."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing model and the software licensing model could be better."
"LoadRunner Professional's licensing costs are on the higher side, apart from the Community Edition."
"It is a high-cost investment, particularly for companies with small budgets or limited testing needs."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The pricing model, especially when involving partners, could use some improvement."
"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."
"Certainly, the cost could be reduced."
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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
18%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Healthcare Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

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 '...
What do you like most about SmartBear LoadComplete?
SmartBear LoadNinja is easy to use and implement.
What needs improvement with SmartBear LoadComplete?
SmartBear LoadNinja presented issues around some use cases that we wanted to do. We were using the solution to simulate using a browser and to give some browser access to our use case for multiple ...
What advice do you have for others considering SmartBear LoadComplete?
For API, we were previously using JMeter, which is an open-source solution. Overall, I rate SmartBear LoadNinja a seven out of ten.
 

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 LoadRunner Professional vs. SmartBear LoadNinja and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.