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OpenText LoadRunner Professional vs OpenText Silk Test comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
80
Ranking in other categories
Performance Testing Tools (4th), Load Testing Tools (4th)
OpenText Silk Test
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Functional Testing Tools (20th), Regression Testing Tools (8th), Test Automation Tools (20th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Quality Assurance solutions, they serve different purposes. OpenText LoadRunner Professional is designed for Performance Testing Tools and holds a mindshare of 13.5%, down 13.9% compared to last year.
OpenText Silk Test, on the other hand, focuses on Functional Testing Tools, holds 1.0% mindshare, down 1.3% since last year.
Performance Testing Tools
Functional 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.
SrinivasPakala - PeerSpot reviewer
Stable, with good statistics and detailed reporting available
While we are performance testing the engineering key, we need to come up with load strategies to commence the test. We'll help to monitor the test, and afterward, we'll help to make all the outcomes, and if they are new, we'll do lots and lots of interpretation and analysis across various servers, to look at response times, and impact. For example, whatever the observations we had during the test, we need to implement it. We'll have to help to catch what exactly is the issues were, and we'll help to see how they can be reduced. Everything is very manual. It's up to us to find out exactly what the issues are. The solution needs better monitoring, especially of CPU.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 most valuable features of Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional are the separate module for scripting, execution analysis, and integration with a lot of new things pipeline areas. They keep updating their releases. Recently, they have released different versions, such as the professional and enterprise. They're coming up with new features which are good."
"I appreciate its ability to handle various internal calls and its user-friendly interface."
"I like the user interface. I like the way we can divide our scenarios and can tune them. The integration with the quality center is great. These features are really good."
"It has features for recording. The best feature with Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional is that there is very little bottleneck or overhead issues. With LoadRunner, you can spawn 2000 contributions for one machine."
"I recommend LoadRunner Professional as it supports many protocols and applications and is very easy to set up and use."
"It is an advanced tool with multiple options available for the performance system."
"There are various languages that they allow those programs to be written in, whether you want to use Java or something else."
"A good automation tool that supports SAP functional testing."
"It's easy to automate and accelerate testing."
"The feature I like most is the ease of reporting."
"The statistics that are available are very good."
"The major thing it has helped with is to reduce the workload on testing activities."
"The scalability of the solution is quite good. You can easily expand the product if you need to."
"The ability to develop scripts in Visual Studio, Visual Studio integration, is the most valuable feature."
"Scripting is the most valuable. We are able to record and then go in and modify the script that it creates. It has a lot of generative scripts."
 

Cons

"The pricing could be lower."
"In terms of improvement, it lacks mobile testing features present in some competitors, like GitMatters, which I find valuable."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is low, and ten is high-quality technical support, I rate the support a one."
"There should be more integration with more open-source platforms."
"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."
"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 product is pretty heavy and should be more lightweight."
"Sometimes when we were migrating from one version to another, some of our scripts started failing."
"We moved to Ranorex because the solution did not easily scale, and we could not find good and short term third-party help. We needed to have a bigger pool of third-party contractors that we could draw on for specific implementations. Silk didn't have that, and we found what we needed for Ranorex here in the Houston area. It would be good if there is more community support. I don't know if Silk runs a user conference once a year and how they set up partners. We need to be able to talk to somebody more than just on the phone. It really comes right down to that. The generated automated script was highly dependent upon screen position and other keys that were not as robust as we wanted. We found the automated script generated by Ranorex and the other key information about a specific data point to be more robust. It handled the transition better when we moved from computer to computer and from one size of the application to the other size. When we restarted Silk, we typically had to recalibrate screen elements within the script. Ranorex also has some of these same issues, but when we restart, it typically is faster, which is important."
"The support for automation with iOS applications can be better."
"They should extend some of the functions that are a bit clunky and improve the integration."
"The pricing could be improved."
"The solution has a lack of compatibility with newer technologies."
"Could be more user-friendly on the installation and configuration side."
"Everything is very manual. It's up to us to find out exactly what the issues are."
"The pricing is an issue, the program is very expensive. That is something that can improve."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is a high-cost investment, particularly for companies with small budgets or limited testing needs."
"The price is a bit on the high side, but it is still affordable."
"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."
"The pricing model and the software licensing model could be better."
"When you compare the cost of other tools such as NeoLoad and LoadNinja, the cost of LoadRunner is on the expensive side. As a result, we are currently considering going with NeoLoad."
"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."
"It is reasonable. We pay the cost, but we have everything. We have a big set of licenses for SAP and other applications. We have all kinds of licenses."
"LoadRunner is more expensive than some competing products."
"We paid annually. There is a purchase cost, and then there is an ongoing maintenance fee."
"Our licensing fees are on a yearly basis, and while I think that the price is quite reasonable I am not allowed to share those details."
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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%
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
10%
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Silk Test?
The pricing depends on the license used. The pricing is similar to others in the market.
What is your primary use case for Silk Test?
The product is used for manual, functional, and performance testing. I'm using the tool for loading data into ERP systems.
 

Also Known As

Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional, Micro Focus LoadRunner, HPE LoadRunner, LoadRunner
Segue, SilkTest, Micro Focus Silk Test
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

JetBlue, GOME, Australian Red Cross Blood Service, RMIT University, Virgin Media
Krung Thai Computer Services, Quality Kiosk, Mªller, AVG Technologies
Find out what your peers are saying about Apache, Tricentis, Perforce and others in Performance Testing Tools. Updated: April 2025.
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