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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 January 2026, in the Performance Testing Tools category, the mindshare of OpenText Professional Performance Engineering (LoadRunner Professional) is 12.1%, down from 12.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SmartBear LoadNinja is 2.3%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Performance Testing Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
OpenText Professional Performance Engineering (LoadRunner Professional)12.1%
SmartBear LoadNinja2.3%
Other85.6%
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

"The stability of Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional is very high. It is the leading tool for stability."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten...Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten."
"I recommend LoadRunner Professional as it supports many protocols and applications and is very easy to set up and use."
"The number of protocols that it supports, and especially, for example, when it talks about SAP GUI-based performance testing."
"I think that analytics is very good and that the analytics features are very powerful."
"The implementation was very straightforward and not an issue."
"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 solution can handle a huge amount of workloads, it's quite scalable."
"SmartBear LoadNinja is easy to use and implement."
"It's a very simple tool for performance testing."
"We are happy with the technical support."
 

Cons

"The technical support of Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional could improve. I had an issue with the licensing and their response time is slow. They can improve on this in the future."
"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."
"You should be able to use LoadRunner as a single platform. You should be able to have browser based access. You should be able to run enterprise tests."
"Sometimes when we were migrating from one version to another, some of our scripts started failing."
"Micro Focus has two separate products for web and mobile applications, which means you have to invest in both."
"The flexibility could be improved."
"LoadRunner Professional's parameter data could be improved."
"We'd like the solution to be a bit more user-friendly."
"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."
"It needs time to mature."
"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 fee for LoadRunner Professional is very high - about US$500 per user."
"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."
"LoadRunner Professional's licensing costs are on the higher side, apart from the Community Edition."
"LoadRunner is more expensive than some competing products."
"I don't know the licensing cost, but I think that you would get a discount for normal usage. I think there are different yearly options for different types of usage. It is not only how many users, but also whether it is shareable or not and other criteria involved in each feature. There are additional fees for the users and hardware linked to the processing."
"It is a high-cost investment, particularly for companies with small budgets or limited testing needs."
"The licensing fees are based on the number of users."
"The cost depends greatly on the needs of the testing engagement."
"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
13%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Consumer Goods Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
University
9%
 

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: December 2025.
879,455 professionals have used our research since 2012.