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IBM Rational Test Workbench vs OpenText Professional Performance Engineering (LoadRunner Professional) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 19, 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
20th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
API Testing Tools (16th), Test Automation Tools (37th)
OpenText Professional Perfo...
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 August 2025, in the Performance Testing Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Rational Test Workbench is 0.8%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenText Professional Performance Engineering (LoadRunner Professional) is 14.8%, up from 12.4% 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."
"I would rate Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional's stability at eight out of ten."
"The reporting mechanism is a valuable feature that generates good reports."
"Very useful for finding out how the system responds to load, stress, and normal situations, as well as benchmarking with other industry competitors. It also improved our response time, memory delegation, and CPU delegation. In addition, we used LoadRunner to optimize our database and website."
"I think that analytics is very good and that the analytics features are very powerful."
"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 capabilities and flexibility of the Controller, the ability to monitor the systems under test, and the comprehensive results Analysis which saves a great deal of time."
"What we like the most is that it integrates with UC."
"It uses high-level languages like Java, CVC, and CCL."
 

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."
"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."
"Sometimes when we were migrating from one version to another, some of our scripts started failing."
"There should be more integration with more open-source platforms."
"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."
"The product is pretty heavy and should be more lightweight."
"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."
"There's a reporting part of the cloud that could be improved a little bit."
"Instead of having too many graphs and tabs, use the analysis section to get a more simplified defect analysis."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It doesn't really concern me. Licensing is on a yearly basis."
"The pricing is a little bit on the higher side, although it is really good."
"The licensing is on a yearly basis and is relatively expensive."
"The solution's pricing is expensive."
"The pricing model and the software licensing model could be better."
"OpenText LoadRunner Enterprise's pricing is reasonable."
"It is a high-cost investment, particularly for companies with small budgets or limited testing needs."
"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."
"LoadRunner is more expensive than some competing products."
"LoadRunner Professional's licensing costs are on the higher side, apart from the Community Edition."
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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
30%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Non Profit
9%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
6%
 

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 Professional Performance Engineering (LoadRunner Professional) and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.