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OpenText LoadRunner Professional vs ReadyAPI 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

OpenText LoadRunner Profess...
Ranking in Performance Testing Tools
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
80
Ranking in other categories
Load Testing Tools (4th)
ReadyAPI
Ranking in Performance Testing Tools
7th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
Functional Testing Tools (17th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Performance Testing Tools category, the mindshare of OpenText LoadRunner Professional is 13.5%, down from 13.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ReadyAPI is 2.8%, up from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Performance Testing Tools
 

Featured Reviews

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.
SandeepSingh9 - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows you to parameterize in one place for the changes to reflect everywhere and lets you customize the environment, but its load testing feature needs improvement, and costs need to be cheaper
One of the features of ReadyAPI that's worth mentioning is that it allows you to parameterize. I'm working with more than two hundred resources, so I don't have to go and make a small change at each point every time. I have the option to just parameterize in one place for the changes to reflect everywhere. Another valuable feature of ReadyAPI is that it provides a customized environment. In my company, you work in different environments, such as QA, UAT, and LT, so the URLs for every environment are different. In ReadyAPI, you can customize your environment, set it up, then start working on it. Another feature worth mentioning that's offered in ReadyAPI is automating your test value as the tool allows Groovy scripting. In your test case, you can use a Groovy script that says that in a particular test case, you have ten resources, but you just want to exhibit five and that you don't want to exhibit the remaining five. You can write a small Groovy script that lets you execute just five resources out of the ten resources. I also like that ReadyAPI allows you to read the data from CFC and Excel. It also allows you to create or customize your data, but that only works at a certain point because every application has its specific data. ReadyAPI cannot generate every data, but when I'm posting and I want to generate a random name, such as a first name, I can do it in ReadyAPI. The tool also has many different features which I find valuable, including Git integration.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I recommend LoadRunner Professional as it supports many protocols and applications and is very easy to set up and use."
"We don't find any features lacking. One of the most beneficial points we have from LoadRunner is we start sizing our infrastructure accordingly. So what we do is when we deploy a new workload, we do performance testing."
"The solution is quite stable."
"The Analysis feature makes it easy to analyze cross-data and we can pin to the focus period."
"The ability to do multithreading. That's available in any performance testing tool, but the number of protocols that this particular tool supports has been very good."
"LoadRunner is a very systematic tool for anyone to use. Even someone who is actually a first time user of LoadRunner can actually get a lot of benefit out of the tool."
"Graph monitoring is a valuable feature."
"I think that analytics is very good and that the analytics features are very powerful."
"The feature that allows you to import an API collection or a project is valuable."
"This solution is very intuitive. Once you finish your first few testing cases, you can change several parameters and create lots of testing cases. You could use the same testing cases for different purposes such as automation, performance and screen testing."
"It has the ability to combine it with different CI/CD tools."
"The most valuable feature is being able to run each version for test suites."
"The most valuable features of ReadyAPI are the scripting tools and the connectivity to external data sources, such as Excel and PDF files. There are plenty of useful features that are useful, such as automating flexibility and usability. Overall, the solution is easy to use."
"ReadyAPI's best features are that it's user-friendly and its behavior-driven development is flexible."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"It's great for those that don't have as much exposure to programming."
 

Cons

"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 solution needs to reduce its pricing. Right now, it's quite expensive."
"The only scenario we see a complexity is when we have single-page applications where JavaScript is talking to the server and coming back. That's the only scenario where we find some difficulties."
"Micro Focus has two separate products for web and mobile applications, which means you have to invest in both."
"The flexibility could be improved."
"Sometimes, we aren't able to see an accurate page view while replying and executing the script. When you are navigating the application side by side, it needs to be displayed on a random viewer. Sometimes we will get a few applications, and we won't get others."
"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."
"The solution lacks some form of integration."
"I don't like how they don't have a clear way to manage tests between multiple projects."
"They have performance testing also. However, it's not that great."
"The UI is not user-friendly."
"The performance in some cases needs improvement. Sometimes it requires too many resources."
"Advanced functionalities could be improved."
"Based on my experience, ReadyAPI could improve by simplifying the process of scripting."
"What needs improvement in ReadyAPI is its load testing feature because there was a hiccup when my team performed some load testing on the tool. My team had meetings with the ReadyAPI team and tried to get that issue fixed, but it still hasn't improved. This is a shortcoming of the tool, especially when you compare it with HP LoadRunner."
"There is room for improvement in ReadyAPI, particularly in the user interface."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a licensing cost that is expensive."
"The price is a bit on the high side, but it is still affordable."
"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 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."
"There is an annual license required to use Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional. There are not any additional costs other than the licensing fees to use it."
"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."
"LoadRunner Professional's licensing costs are on the higher side, apart from the Community Edition."
"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."
"We use fixed licenses, and the last time I checked, I want to say it's around $680 per seat per year."
"The pricing is very competitive."
"It costs approximately $200 000 Taiwan Dollars for three years."
"If I remember correctly, ReadyAPI costs between $5,000 to $7,000 for five thousand virtual users running it at a given point in time. Other tools, for example, Apache JMeter, can run millions of users at a given time. ReadyAPI is a tool that requires you to pay more money if you want more users to run it for performance testing. For functional testing, each ReadyAPI license costs $1,000, and you do get basic testing, and it's inclusive of one hundred users. In my company, if there's a need for more than one hundred users, my team uses Apache JMeter because it's futile to end up paying $5,000 or $6,000 annually just for performance testing, which can be done in Apache JMeter as well. Given the circumstances, my team does performance testing only towards the end of the fiscal year when the regulatory testing of applications takes place. If I have to run ReadyAPI just for two days or just for ten or fifteen odd days, then it's not worth paying $5,000 for the license with the small number of users provided by ReadyAPI."
"We have approximately 12 licenses in place. There are other solutions that are more expensive than ReadyAPI that have more features, but if the scope of the project is limited to SOAP and REST service, then this is the best option."
"It is expensive. Each user needs to be licensed, and there are different licenses within the product. It starts with 750 euros for a single user per year, but for the full product features, you need to pay a lot more. There are three versions. This cost is for functional testing, and then there is a cost for load testing and virtual services. If you want to use these areas with the functional test license, you are limited. You hit some limits in these functions. If you have all three licenses, then you have full functionality for the API."
"For each license, they charge the same amount, which is less than $1,000 for each desktop license."
"There are costs in addition to the licensing fee. For example, if you want to add the load testing you would pay more."
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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
18%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Healthcare Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
15%
Insurance Company
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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?
Technical support needs to be faster, and the pricing should be more competitive. The virtual table server feature should be reintroduced. Some AI capabilities should be added. There should be an '...
What do you like most about ReadyAPI?
The performance testing capabilities are very good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ReadyAPI?
Currently, we don't extensively use the performance testing due to license costs. License prices can be a factor in considering which technologies to adopt.
What needs improvement with ReadyAPI?
In native teams and cloud environments, there is room for improvement. I'm considering the use of AWS and its Lambda functionalities prepared by the vendor. These are more so points from my wishlis...
 

Also Known As

Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional, Micro Focus LoadRunner, HPE LoadRunner, LoadRunner
Ready API
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

JetBlue, GOME, Australian Red Cross Blood Service, RMIT University, Virgin Media
Healthcare Data Solutions (HDS)
Find out what your peers are saying about OpenText LoadRunner Professional vs. ReadyAPI and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,760 professionals have used our research since 2012.