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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
 

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 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."
"The most valuable feature has been the assertion as a test step as this has allowed us to increase the scope of testing and validation."
"It's great for those that don't have as much exposure to programming."
"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."
"The most valuable features of ReadyAPI are the drag-and-drop options and the integration with versioning tool solutions, such as Git."
"ReadyAPI's best features are that it's user-friendly and its behavior-driven development is flexible."
"It's easy to implement."
"ReadyAPI enhances my workflows by allowing us to use Docker containers based on the ReadyAPI test runner."
"We are happy with the technical support."
"SmartBear LoadNinja is easy to use and implement."
"It's a very simple tool for performance testing."
 

Cons

"The UI is not user-friendly."
"The reporting in ReadyAPI could be better. It can become sloppy, sometimes it works and other times it does not."
"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 updating of event listeners for new project imports."
"There is a lot of room for improvement, mainly from the point of view of integrating ReadyAPI into the CI pipelines, and also the scripting aspect into Bitbucket."
"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."
"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."
"Lacking flexibility of adding more custom verification for security testing."
"Areas for improvement include the security files, endpoints, and process sessions."
"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."
"It needs time to mature."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"It costs approximately $200 000 Taiwan Dollars for three years."
"ReadyAPI is moderately priced, with added costs for more plugins."
"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."
"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."
"This is a cheap solution when you consider the money that will be saved in testing."
"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."
"Certainly, the cost could be reduced."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
15%
Insurance Company
10%
Healthcare Company
6%
Healthcare Company
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
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.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.