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ReadyAPI vs SmartBear LoadNinja 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

ReadyAPI
Ranking in Performance Testing Tools
7th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
Functional Testing Tools (14th)
SmartBear LoadNinja
Ranking in Performance Testing Tools
11th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Load Testing Tools (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Performance Testing Tools category, the mindshare of ReadyAPI is 2.9%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SmartBear LoadNinja is 2.0%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Performance Testing Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
ReadyAPI2.9%
SmartBear LoadNinja2.0%
Other95.1%
Performance Testing Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Walter Wirch - PeerSpot reviewer
Seamless integration with cloud environments supports backend projects while seeking AWS Lambda enhancements
ReadyAPI enhances my workflows by allowing us to use Docker containers based on the ReadyAPI test runner. It helps extend our functional tests, even though we are not heavily using performance testing. It supports a wide range of protocols such as Kafka and GRPC, depending on the project. It also aids in faster feedback to developers, allowing them to implement developments in a sprint without the need for extensive testing afterwards, thus improving our time to market metrics.
Kapil Tarka - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to use with good documentation and helpful support
It's a new tool when I compare it with LoadViewer and HP LoadRunner. It needs time to mature. For example, it needs to improve concurrency. When you run a test suite, your scripts will generate some test data. If we are running a banking application and then we are running a full end-to-end suite, there are many actions that need testing. There's a lot of data getting generated. There should be a variable that we can store for later in our later test cases. We need data management and dynamic data generation to be able to capture the data which is generated.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The performance testing capabilities are very good."
"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."
"ReadyAPI's best features are user-friendliness, smooth integration with Postman, the speed of creating test cases, and integration with customer data."
"The two most valuable features we use are the functional test and the security test."
"I haven't seen any other tool that offers both types of tests. This is very helpful for us, and it's one of the main reasons why we chose this service."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"The great thing about ReadyAPI is that it has a wide variety of functions. You can test any API that you come across. You are not limited to one type of API. It supports many APIs."
"It is the best solution you can get across the globe for API, test automation, and API penetration testing."
"SmartBear LoadNinja is easy to use and implement."
"It's a very simple tool for performance testing."
"We are happy with the technical support."
 

Cons

"In terms of features, I have already raised different change requests on the ReadyAPI side. One of the largest functions I've requested is the validation of the payload for the REST APIs."
"Many users will consider this solution expensive compared to the layout. It is more expensive than other solutions."
"Better compatibility or more support for the older versions would be helpful."
"Version control does not work well."
"Areas for improvement include the security files, endpoints, and process sessions."
"It doesn't have connectors to the NoSQL database. This is one of the things where they do not have a very solid strategy today. Other solutions have an in-built mechanism where I can directly and easily connect. An API is more around a user submitting a request on the frontend. It then hits the backend, puts the data, and responds back. If I am hitting MongoDB or NoSQL databases, I do not have ready-made inbuilt solutions in ReadyAPI that can easily help me in automating it faster. In our organization, we deal with NoSQL databases, and therefore, we need Groovy. We just cannot have a connector from ReadyAPI to do that. I have to write Groovy scripts. If you have themes that are predominantly using MongoDB, it leads to more maintenance and support activity because we are introducing more code into our commission. In terms of additional features, it can have cloud support. This is one of the things where we are getting into cloud support. We'll see how it works, but it is one of the doubts that we still have."
"Performance and memory management both need to be improved because other solutions use less memory for the same amount of data."
"ReadyAPI can improve because it is limited to only SOAP and REST services. They should update the solution to include more protocols so that other people are not limited to SOAP and REST services. Other than would be able to utilize it."
"It needs time to mature."
"On a smaller scale, there will be no budget issues, but as we expand to a larger user base, I believe we will face some pricing challenges."
"As we ran the test, we couldn't see the real-time results of how the solution behaved for 200 to 400 virtual users."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"There are costs in addition to the licensing fee. For example, if you want to add the load testing you would pay more."
"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."
"We use fixed licenses, and the last time I checked, I want to say it's around $680 per seat per year."
"The solution is dynamically priced so you only pay for what you use."
"We pay $3,000 annually for a floating license. actually. That allows another person from my company to use it as well. It's a cloud-based license."
"For each license, they charge the same amount, which is less than $1,000 for each desktop license."
"It costs approximately $200 000 Taiwan Dollars for three years."
"Certainly, the cost could be reduced."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
14%
Insurance Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Healthcare Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise28
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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?
One issue I found with ReadyAPI is related to event listeners compared to JMeter or SoapUI. We created an in-house dashboard to display automation runs across projects, which required manual updati...
What do you like most about SmartBear LoadComplete?
SmartBear LoadNinja is easy to use and implement.
What needs improvement with SmartBear LoadComplete?
SmartBear LoadNinja presented issues around some use cases that we wanted to do. We were using the solution to simulate using a browser and to give some browser access to our use case for multiple ...
What advice do you have for others considering SmartBear LoadComplete?
For API, we were previously using JMeter, which is an open-source solution. Overall, I rate SmartBear LoadNinja a seven out of ten.
 

Also Known As

Ready API
SmartBear LoadComplete
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Healthcare Data Solutions (HDS)
Falafel Software
Find out what your peers are saying about ReadyAPI vs. SmartBear LoadNinja and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
866,300 professionals have used our research since 2012.