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IBM Rational Test Workbench vs Sauce Labs comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 2024

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 Test Automation Tools
28th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Performance Testing Tools (18th), API Testing Tools (16th)
Sauce Labs
Ranking in Test Automation Tools
18th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
113
Ranking in other categories
Functional Testing Tools (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Test Automation Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Rational Test Workbench is 1.7%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sauce Labs is 3.4%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Test Automation Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Sauce Labs3.4%
IBM Rational Test Workbench1.7%
Other94.9%
Test Automation Tools
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1513668 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Specialist, ITE at a government with 10,001+ employees
Good reporting and interface, but supports limited types of protocols and requires low-level script editing
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.
MR
Lead Consultant at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Provides multiple test environments and saves time, but should have something for inspecting mobile apps screens
With the desktop browser, we can inspect any screen with the web developer option, but they should provide something for mobiles so that we can quickly inspect elements on the device. To write the Selenium scripts, we require web locators. We have to capture them from the local and execute the script on Sauce Labs. If Sauce Labs can provide a solution where we can inspect any of the mobile devices online, it will be very helpful for us. I also faced an issue where during the execution time, the iCloud password used to expire within a certain period, which used to create pop-ups on the screen making our tests fail. That was one thing that we faced many times. If that can be improved, it will be very helpful.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Reporting is pretty good. Its interface is also good. I'm overall pretty happy with the functionality and use of IBM Rational Test Workbench."
"All IBM testing tools are really well integrated."
"Using service virtualization, we are able to accelerate the testing and development activity."
"This solution provides for API testing, functional UI testing, performance testing, and service virtualization."
"IBM Rational integrates the testing software as Rational Test Workbench, which is quite convenient and efficient as it is able to automate the test scripts."
"So far, the stability has proven to be quite good."
"Now I get results 100 times faster with a wider range of platforms and different browser versions used."
"Wide variety of platform and browser configurations."
"Using Sauce Labs testing, it is faster and more accurate."
"It helped to integrate our performance testing and UAT, which helped to deliver a bug free software for our customers."
"As stated earlier we use Sauce Labs for a combination of automated testing and manual testing. Therefore the most useful features are the ability to run the functional automated tests via a Sauce Labs tunnels which allows access to applications in our internal network. The second most useful feature is the manual side."
"Faster access to different versions of browsers, without needing to worry about hardware or software limitations; 99% uptime."
"Sauce Labs tool has improved my testing efficiency to allow me to include devices I may not have had time to test out before."
 

Cons

"Implementing custom functions is bit tedious job, as ECMA script does not support some of the standard java-script functions, Also the Script editor window is not user friendly."
"Rational Performance Tester supports cloud technology in the version 8.7, playing test scripts back on the cloud is not stable."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"On a rare occasion, I will come into a ticket where a customer will have reached out to me after reaching out to Sauce Labs, saying, "Sauce Labs doesn't understand what I am going through. They are not being very helpful." So, I try to do clean up there. Outside of those extremely rare occasions, I have only had one or two of those support issues."
"Better and programmatic controls on request/response recordings and sharing with developers."
"The main interface, although clean, is sometimes very slow to load on slower connections and selecting a machine and waiting for it to boot up the environment takes a lot longer than other products I have used."
"In our experience, we have also had some issues with the Sauce Connect Proxy on our Jenkins servers failing to start, which makes the optimal CI/CD pipeline come to a halt."
"We had some specific features that we opened tickets on, although they were not earth-shattering. For example, the way the menus scroll could be improved because it does not have a bar, the way that people are used to, where you can move up and down."
"I would like for there to be more detail in regards to the quality of our code i.e. how many failures occurred, how many passed based on industry standard metrics, etc."
"An image comparison would be a nice feature to include in the Sauce Labs product."
"They still have very slow support and ask many excessive questions before starting to fix the issue."
 

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."
"We pay for a specific number of VMs."
"Compared with other services, Sauce Labs is a bit expensive."
"When you reach the Enterprise licensing tier, base level being with 10 concurrent test sessions, pricing is essentially per-unit-of-concurrency thereafter with a relatively linear increase and not much benefit for "bulk"."
"Their pricing is incredibly competitive."
"It is an expensive tool."
"We did initially go with Sauce Labs because of the pricing and integration."
"The pricing is reasonable due to the amount of diversity that they provide. However, I feel they might be more flexible to bargain based on their relationship with our organization."
"​Now that we have an enterprise license, we no longer have to worry about minutes each month!​"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
16%
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise73
 

Also Known As

Rational Test Workbench, IBM Rational Performance Tester, IBM Functional Tester, IBM Rational Test Virtualization Server
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Financial Insurance Management Corp.
Salesforce.com, Mozilla, Zendesk, Puppet Labs, Twitter, Bank of America, Eventbrite, Bleacher Report, Okta, Intuit, Travelocity, Sharecare, CapitalOne.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Rational Test Workbench vs. Sauce Labs and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.