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IBM Rational Test Workbench vs OpenText LoadRunner Professional comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 5, 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

IBM Rational Test Workbench
Ranking in Performance Testing Tools
21st
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
API Testing Tools (15th), Test Automation Tools (39th)
OpenText LoadRunner Profess...
Ranking in Performance Testing Tools
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
81
Ranking in other categories
Load Testing Tools (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Performance Testing Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Rational Test Workbench is 0.7%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenText LoadRunner Professional is 13.9%, up from 13.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Performance Testing Tools
 

Featured Reviews

KashifJamil - PeerSpot reviewer
Good integration with other tools, stable, scales easily
There are a number of things that they can do to simplify the tools, but the most important thing that they need to do is simplify the installation. This includes the workbench as well as the other tools. In the future, I would like to see the other types of tests supported, that are not already covered in the DevOps approach. This would include, for example, penetration testing.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This solution provides for API testing, functional UI testing, performance testing, and service virtualization."
"Reporting is pretty good. Its interface is also good. I'm overall pretty happy with the functionality and use of IBM Rational Test Workbench."
"The tool's most valuable features are scripting and automation."
"It uses high-level languages like Java, CVC, and CCL."
"I would rate Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional's stability at eight out of ten."
"I recommend LoadRunner Professional as it supports many protocols and applications and is very easy to set up and use."
"The solution supports a lot of protocols."
"It has features for recording. The best feature with Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional is that there is very little bottleneck or overhead issues. With LoadRunner, you can spawn 2000 contributions for one machine."
"The number of protocols that it supports, and especially, for example, when it talks about SAP GUI-based performance testing."
"The solution can handle a huge amount of workloads, it's quite scalable."
 

Cons

"It should have more interfaces. In terms of interfaces or protocols, what you can do with Rational is far limited as compared to other products out there. What it does, it does great, but it only gives you limited types of protocols. It supports between 8 to 15 types of protocols, whereas other test tools give you 20 to 30 types of protocols with which you can do testing and convert to script. It records Javascript-based scripts, and you got to know a little bit of Java to basically be able to edit them, but the level of editing you got to do is very low. I like that, but the ability to edit the script is not as good as Parasoft or LoadRunner, which have C-Script."
"There are a number of things that they can do to simplify the tools, but the most important thing that they need to do is simplify the installation."
"Improvement wise, the pipeline should be enabled. It should be embedded as part of the tool itself rather than going with third-party tools. Monitoring should be more effective as well."
"Compared to some other vendors, there is a lack of community support."
"There should be more integration with more open-source platforms."
"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."
"The product is pretty heavy and should be more lightweight."
"The pricing model, selling model, and business model need to be adjusted. For non-enterprise organizations, Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional is too expensive and not worth the cost."
"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"
"Micro Focus has two separate products for web and mobile applications, which means you have to invest in both."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is a little bit on the higher side, although it is really good."
"It doesn't really concern me. Licensing is on a yearly basis."
"I would still consider LoadRunner as an expensive tool and you get a LoadRunner and the Performance Center."
"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"I would rate the solution's pricing a nine out of ten."
"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."
"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."
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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
31%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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 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 th...
 

Also Known As

Rational Test Workbench, IBM Rational Performance Tester, IBM Functional Tester, IBM Rational Test Virtualization Server
Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional, Micro Focus LoadRunner, HPE LoadRunner, LoadRunner
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Financial Insurance Management Corp.
JetBlue, GOME, Australian Red Cross Blood Service, RMIT University, Virgin Media
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Rational Test Workbench vs. OpenText LoadRunner Professional and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
857,162 professionals have used our research since 2012.