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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

"What we like the most is that it integrates with UC."
"It provides clients with an understanding of application and system performance."
"LoadRunner Professional allowed us to load test potential new payroll solutions that would be implemented throughout the entire organization so that we knew which was best suited to performing well under pressure."
"Paramterization and correlation are important features."
"The number of protocols that it supports, and especially, for example, when it talks about SAP GUI-based performance testing."
"There are various languages that they allow those programs to be written in, whether you want to use Java or something else."
"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."
"Enables us to test most of the products and projects that we have across all the different technologies, without having to look at other tools."
"We are happy with the technical support."
"SmartBear LoadNinja is easy to use and implement."
"It's a very simple tool for performance testing."
 

Cons

"LoadRunner Professional's parameter data could be improved."
"There is room for improvement of the pilot processing, the dump analysis, and forwarding results based on the dump analysis. We have a generator, root controller, different agents, and an analyzer, so all of these are very important when it comes to LoadRunner."
"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."
"Sometimes, we aren't able to see an accurate page view while replying and executing the script. When you are navigating the application side by side, it needs to be displayed on a random viewer. Sometimes we will get a few applications, and we won't get others."
"I would like to see better-licensing costs."
"The reporting and GUI have room for improvement."
"I guess scalability becomes a problem when you use things like TruClients."
"The solution is very costly. The cost is very high, especially considering a lot of other resources are available now and they are less expensive. For a small organization, it is very difficult to sustain the costs involved in having the solution or the related fees"
"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."
"As we ran the test, we couldn't see the real-time results of how the solution behaved for 200 to 400 virtual users."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing model is complex. You have to pick up the protocol and the number of concurrent users, and then select the level of concurrent users. For example, there would be one price for 100 to 500 users and another for 500 to 2000 users. If you choose two protocols, then you will have to pay twice the amount depending on the number of concurrent users."
"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."
"LoadRunner is more expensive than some competing products."
"I would still consider LoadRunner as an expensive tool and you get a LoadRunner and the Performance Center."
"The pricing model, especially when involving partners, could use some improvement."
"LoadRunner Professional is an expensive product."
"The pricing model and the software licensing model could be better."
"The licensing fees are based on the number of users."
"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
9%
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.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.