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ReadyAPI vs SmartBear LoadNinja comparison

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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
16th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Load Testing Tools (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Performance Testing Tools category, the mindshare of ReadyAPI is 3.1%, up from 3.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SmartBear LoadNinja is 2.1%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Performance Testing Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ReadyAPI3.1%
SmartBear LoadNinja2.1%
Other94.8%
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 initial setup is straightforward."
"The most valuable features are the integration with Jira and the test management tools."
"The most valuable features of ReadyAPI are the drag-and-drop options and the integration with versioning tool solutions, such as Git."
"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."
"When we are doing API testing we have found it to be very efficient to receive results. Additionally, you are able to do tests directly from the API."
"ReadyAPI is one of the best tools for API testing because they have made a single platform for functional testing, load testing security, and also service actualization."
"The feature I find valuable is project management, as it allows us to organize our test cases and suites inside the project and store variables as properties so they can be used across test cases and test suites at the project, test suite, or test case level."
"Reporting is more robust than other products because test reports can be exported in multiple ways."
"The most powerful aspect is the ease of use."
"It's a very simple tool for performance testing."
"But for now, we are happy with what have been using."
"We are happy with the technical support."
"SmartBear LoadNinja is easy to use and implement."
 

Cons

"The reporting in ReadyAPI could be better. It can become sloppy, sometimes it works and other times it does not."
"The performance in some cases needs improvement. Sometimes it requires too many resources."
"Areas for improvement include the security files, endpoints, and process sessions."
"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."
"Version control does not work well."
"There are lots of options within the solution, however they are not upfront or user-friendly."
"I would not recommend this product, as there are better products out there."
"ReadyAPI could improve by having dynamic validation information."
"As we ran the test, we couldn't see the real-time results of how the solution behaved for 200 to 400 virtual users."
"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."
"Certainly, the cost could be reduced. It requires attention. Clients have expressed dissatisfaction with the price."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 thing with ReadyAPI is that you have to buy different licenses for different purposes."
"The price of the solution has been fine."
"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."
"The cost of a license is probably around $1,000 to $2,000. Accounting is done by my leadership. I am more into implementations and making sure all things and processes are taken care of and the frameworks are maintained and managed."
"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."
"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."
"Certainly, the cost could be reduced."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Construction Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
19%
University
11%
Construction Company
11%
 

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
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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: September 2026.
915,325 professionals have used our research since 2012.