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IBM Rational Test Workbench vs Sauce Labs comparison

 

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
37th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Performance Testing Tools (20th), 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 (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Test Automation Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Rational Test Workbench is 0.3%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sauce Labs is 2.8%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Test Automation 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.
AnupKumar4 - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers good stability and robust but lacks generative AI capabilities
Technical support is equally very important. If you talk about anything deployed to production, and the project is live, customers are using that, and they might face some issues, some functional issues. That's when support people play a role in identifying the fix or the incident. Based on that, we create an incident based on the customer defect or whatever. Once the incident gets raised, the support will play a role in working on that particular incident. If it's a code-based incident, administration, or integration issue, support people play a big role in resolving those issues before reaching the exact developers.

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."
"APPIUM for mobile testing has improved our organization by allowing us to test our website on more devices and browsers than we currently possess."
"The most valuable feature is cross-browser, cross-OS, cross-mobile device testing."
"Sauce Labs helps us identify the root causes of bugs. The solution offers a lot of flexibility by providing the latest iOS and Android emulator versions, and even the Appium updates when it comes out in the market."
"Since this is an all-in-one testing site, we are able to take advantage of the browser OS combinations, mobile emulators and simulators, and real mobile devices. This is important to us since we have a variety of users, browsers, OS, etc."
"With only a few clicks, it gives us the availability to use any browser and OS combination whenever we want."
"The error logging is also very robust. If we run a test through Sauce Labs and there's some sort of issue, a log will appear on the screen. Log messages are usually heinous and horrible... Sauce Labs is incredibly good at saying things like, 'Hey, here is the exact issue. Fix this and you can run the test.' That helps in getting things up and running and executing the way they should."
"Before implementing Sauce Labs, we tested physical devices that team members had to share. It was more feasible when we were all located in one office, but we couldn't leverage our offshore capacity. With this solution, we can do everything remotely, which is essential now that most of us work from home."
"I have found the live test section with Sauce Labs to be extremely valuable. When you can't quite figure out why a test is failing, you can go to the live test results section within their tool and launch your test (specifying a given OS/browser, or device) manually and step through the test to see the issue more clearly, usually opening up the developer's tool console and watching the network calls and console (within Chrome) to usually find the underlying issue."
 

Cons

"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. 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."
"I would like to see improved network connectivity and it should allow playback for native apps."
"Start execution time as each time a set of tests start, it will launch a new VM so it takes a bit of time."
"We have 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."
"I can't remove team members that have left the organization. I can only set them as inactive. It would be really nice to clean up my data and delete them from the team management."
"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."
"The ability to install profiles on iOS real mobile devices should be included."
"We have found that during automated testing this can be very slow. This causes inconsistencies with the tests. It's very difficult to rely on a service when you can't be sure if a test will pass or fail the next time it runs. This means building in a lot of sync time into the tests which in turn slows them down. If this speed could be improved then the service would be much better."
"Latency, due to Sauce Labs being a cloud-based solution, has been a concern. We work in different continents and countries, but last time I checked, Sauce Labs was only offering two data centers, one in the EU and another in the US. If you're not in either of those two places, you would have latency and issues running your test cases."
 

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."
"Try the free trial and work with a Sauce Labs representative to see what package works best for your application(s)."
"The number of concurrent VMs that Sauce Labs provides depends on your purchase license level."
"We pay for a specific number of VMs."
"Trial the product and see if it suits your needs."
"We have an enterprise account; it has worked great for our needs."
"Their pricing is incredibly competitive."
"Cost-wise, it's decent. If you have to get the base version out of it, it's the best solution to go with. As compared to other cloud service providers, the pricing of Sauce Labs is decent."
"We did initially go with Sauce Labs because of the pricing and integration."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Non Profit
9%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
6%
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 Sauce Labs?
It has significantly enhanced our testing accuracy by approximately 50%.
What needs improvement with Sauce Labs?
Sauce Labs can include new technologies like generative AI, which can reduce the human effort in writing test cases. For example, in my current project, we reduced the time it took to complete user...
What is your primary use case for Sauce Labs?
I work as an automation engineer using Selenium WebDriver with Java, and API automation using Rest Assured with Java. I have also worked with Docker integration on AWS. Additionally, I have experie...
 

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: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.