No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

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 (15th)
SmartBear LoadNinja
Ranking in Performance Testing Tools
15th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Load Testing Tools (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Performance Testing Tools category, the mindshare of ReadyAPI is 3.2%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SmartBear LoadNinja is 2.5%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Performance Testing Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ReadyAPI3.2%
SmartBear LoadNinja2.5%
Other94.3%
Performance Testing Tools
 

Featured Reviews

PK
Lead QA Engineer at Msys Technologies
Experience effective testing with flexible licensing alongside pivotal insights on essential improvements
For non-functional testing, I focus on performance and security. For performance and security tests, I used REST API, SoapUI, and JMeter. These tools help us conduct thorough testing across these dimensions. I find ReadyAPI helpful especially in overcoming security issues, as we experienced slowness in the application after merging our JAR files. For instance, if a person wants to access a university database and encounters a timeout error, we learned through ReadyAPI that the issue was due to HTML protocol limits with the payload. We fine-tuned this process to display the expected data effectively. I consider ReadyAPI a cost-effective solution because it covers three verticals without needing to purchase separate tools for security, performance, or functional testing. ReadyAPI is a versatile tool for creating multiple testing frameworks and validating various parameters seamlessly. REST API is the tool I use to test all three types of articles, meaning I validate the APIs I send to my peers or clients for functional testing, and I also perform security testing to ensure the URL and data passed through multiple components adhere to policies and user privileges. This is done through functional security testing using the REST API tool, and for performance, I ensure that applications can be accessed simultaneously by multiple users without hindrance or slowness through thorough performance testing.
Kapil Tarka - PeerSpot reviewer
Test Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
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 most valuable features are the integration with Jira and the test management tools."
"ReadyAPI enhances my workflows by allowing us to use Docker containers based on the ReadyAPI test runner."
"ReadyAPI's best features are that it's user-friendly and its behavior-driven development is flexible."
"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."
"Technical support from SmartBear is commendable."
"ReadyAPI is a versatile tool for creating multiple testing frameworks and validating various parameters seamlessly."
"ReadyAPI is one of the best tools to use; it is easy to learn, easy to work with, and the features are very good."
"It's easy to implement."
"It's a very simple tool for performance testing."
"But for now, we are happy with what have been using."
"SmartBear LoadNinja is easy to use and implement."
"We are happy with the technical support."
"The most powerful aspect is the ease of use."
 

Cons

"ReadyAPI is not fully integrated with all system ecosystem tests."
"We have an older version of ReadyAPI and it's not supporting our whole tests, so we have had to migrate some or we've had difficulties running them because they're very old script."
"We stopped using this solution because of issues with scalability. Performance and memory management both need to be improved because other solutions use less memory for the same amount of data."
"I don't like how they don't have a clear way to manage tests between multiple projects."
"I don't like how they don't have a clear way to manage tests between multiple projects."
"The solution is made up of multiple tools, and the one additional feature we'd like to have is load testing."
"Sometimes, if I changed something in ReadyAPI, it would not quickly pick up the change. It used to give me the same error repeatedly, and when I closed the application completely and restarted it, it would pick up that change."
"If ReadyAPI had more integration with all of the big tools on the market then this would be very useful."
"As we ran the test, we couldn't see the real-time results of how the solution behaved for 200 to 400 virtual users."
"Certainly, the cost could be reduced. It requires attention. Clients have expressed dissatisfaction with the price."
"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."
"It needs time to mature."
"It needs time to mature."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"The price was around $6,000 for one license, but I don't remember exactly. It is definitely expensive. Our organization was planning on having multiple licenses for this year."
"It costs approximately $200 000 Taiwan Dollars for three years."
"The thing with ReadyAPI is that you have to buy different licenses for different purposes."
"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."
"There are costs in addition to the licensing fee. For example, if you want to add the load testing you would pay more."
"Certainly, the cost could be reduced."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Performance Testing Tools solutions are best for your needs.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Insurance Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
University
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
12%
University
10%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

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 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 is your primary use case for ReadyAPI?
My experience with Katalon Studio is that we used Katalon for one of our projects, and then I started leveraging Katalon by integrating it with AI tools, AP tools, and aptly tools. Aptly tool is an...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

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: April 2026.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.