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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 (21st), API Testing Tools (16th)
Sauce Labs
Ranking in Test Automation Tools
19th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
113
Ranking in other categories
Functional Testing Tools (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 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 4.0% 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

"Reporting is pretty good. Its interface is also good. I'm overall pretty happy with the functionality and use of IBM Rational Test Workbench."
"This solution provides for API testing, functional UI testing, performance testing, and service virtualization."
"Our machines are mostly Windows. Being able to test with Safari, on a Mac, and other types of browser pieces without having to manage all the infrastructure is the biggest feature that our team enjoys."
"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."
"There is a huge amount of open source, community provided resources."
"It has a wide assortment of platforms."
"The abundance of device, platform, and browser combinations/versions that can be used in parallel."
"Testing across multiple devices and environments is now possible to do quickly and effectively."
"So far, the stability has proven to be quite good."
"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."
 

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."
"Speeds up the time it takes to run end-to-end user interface (UI) tests inside their virtual machines (VMs)."
"There have been various times throughout the last month or so where the service has gone down during business hours."
"I may not know what should be improved on the platform, but I think it could offer a greater variety of testing solutions. I know there might be competing solutions that cover more things I'm unaware of, and it could expand a bit more. We've done a lot of automated testing scenarios, and that's all the rage these days, so I think Sauce Labs could look at potential ways to improve and cover other scenarios."
"Another aspect that could be improved is having the virtual devices boot up a little quicker. Sometimes we wait up to a minute before a device is available. It would be nice if that was 30 seconds or so."
"Start execution time as each time a set of tests start, it will launch a new VM so it takes a bit of time."
"They should provide a JIRA integration plugin so that we can easily log issues."
"This product is not super scalable, because you have a very specific number of VMs that you can use."
"Sometimes pasting text while using "text object" does not seem to work, and it slows down testing times quite a bit."
 

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."
"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 pay for a specific number of VMs."
"We did initially go with Sauce Labs because of the pricing and integration."
"The pricing is definitely on the higher end, and there are other options that are more cost-effective."
"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"."
"​Now that we have an enterprise license, we no longer have to worry about minutes each month!​"
"We have an enterprise account; it has worked great for our needs."
"It could be less like pay-per-use with a lower rate."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
29%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Non Profit
8%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Retailer
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: June 2025.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.