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IBM Rational Performance Tester vs Tricentis NeoLoad 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

IBM Rational Performance Te...
Average Rating
7.6
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Test Management Tools (21st)
Tricentis NeoLoad
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Performance Testing Tools (2nd), Load Testing Tools (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Quality Assurance solutions, they serve different purposes. IBM Rational Performance Tester is designed for Test Management Tools and holds a mindshare of 2.5%, up 1.4% compared to last year.
Tricentis NeoLoad, on the other hand, focuses on Performance Testing Tools, holds 10.7% mindshare, down 16.1% since last year.
Test Management Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Rational Performance Tester2.5%
OpenText Application Quality Management8.2%
Tricentis qTest7.8%
Other81.5%
Test Management Tools
Performance Testing Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Tricentis NeoLoad10.7%
OpenText Professional Performance Engineering (LoadRunner Professional)12.7%
Apache JMeter11.7%
Other64.9%
Performance Testing Tools
 

Featured Reviews

KashifJamil - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO at Xcelliti
Supports web and mobile applications, very scalable, very stable, and wonderful support
There are some features that Micro Focus LoadRunner provides, but they are not available in IBM Rational Performance Tester. They should include such features. It can also have more reports similar to what HP provides. It might also need some improvement in terms of the tools and support for other technology areas. Certain technologies are not supported by every tool. They need to support all sorts of technologies and platforms on which web applications and mobile applications are built. They need complete support for all sorts of technologies.
reviewer2732589 - PeerSpot reviewer
senior test engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Positive experience with seamless setup and responsive support but pricing and version compatibility need improvement
I'm not ready to share what areas of Tricentis NeoLoad have room for improvement now. The price could be more friendly, and it was impossible to continue using the same version of Tricentis NeoLoad, as we were forced to move to the next version. Sometimes there were compatibility problems, and that was a major problem with backward compatibility issues.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has improved our visibility of reporting and simplifying performance testing for larger projects/programs."
"Helped in improving response times in a few of our transactions."
"Real time view and its inbuilt root cause analysis tools is something which I like the most."
"Less coding is needed, it is easy to understand, and it is easy to integrate with existing systems so I can test more than one performance test type, including load testing, stress testing, and scalability testing."
"Comprehensive Rational Performance Tester results allow testers to identify bottlenecks in the systems under test."
"ROI is big because we do not need vendors to assist some with performance testing."
"Rational Performance Tester was perfectly suited to provide the means to monitor the availability and performance of our web services."
"The setup was straightforward, it depends on the company's regulations and infrastructure policies."
"The most valuable feature that we've found useful is that NeoLoad provides a variety of bandwidths."
"NeoLoad is best tool for testing in production without making many changes to the script or solution."
"My company has a good experience with Tricentis NeoLoad, and what I like best about it is that it lets you generate loads from different geographies. The load generation agents getting placed on different geographies is a very good feature of the solution. I also like that you can scale up Tricentis NeoLoad very quickly. The general feedback on performance testing with Tricentis NeoLoad for all product lines within my company is good."
"The best features of this tool, which I value the most in Tricentis NeoLoad, are the convenient predefined set of metrics for different platforms, and it was most easy to set up and start running."
"The stability is okay."
"It’s very easy for a person without any performance testing experience to use."
"A great deal of improvement in application performance happened because we could pin point the bottlenecks."
"From a functional perspective, the range of tools provided with Tricentis NeoLoad is perhaps the widest."
 

Cons

"Support for more protocols is required."
"Installation and configuration processes, and support from IBM all need to be improved."
"The tool has lots of limitations."
"Now, the price slightly expensive especially if you are in small-medium company, but if you are in a medium-high company, and need the powerful tools with IBM great name, just use it."
"There are some features that Micro Focus LoadRunner provides, but they are not available in IBM Rational Performance Tester. They should include such features. It can also have more reports similar to what HP provides. It might also need some improvement in terms of the tools and support for other technology areas. Certain technologies are not supported by every tool. They need to support all sorts of technologies and platforms on which web applications and mobile applications are built. They need complete support for all sorts of technologies."
"Reporting needs improvement to provide more customization options in the performance test analyst to build custom reports."
"The HP tool is overall a little better but much more expensive."
"It was complex."
"NeoLoad’s lack of support for a complete protocol suite is somewhat limiting."
"Tricentis NeoLoad could improve the terminal emulation mainframe. It is not able to use the low code or no code option. You have to code it yourself."
"Reporting needs to be better. I would like to see information such as Send Time, Receive Time, SSL, Waiting Time, and Blocking Time in my response times."
"The only issue that I had was with network virtualization on load generators installed on Windows Server 2008 R2."
"Almost everything about NewLoad looks good, but I would like to have an indication of the variables for error messages appearing in the error tab."
"At times we have had issues with load generator agent stability, but tuning the heap and documented network hacks greatly reduced this."
"There is room for improvement with the support and community documentation as it can be difficult to find answers to questions quickly."
"The product is expensive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is much cheaper than Micro Focus LoadRunner. We need perpetual licenses. Support is included in the first sale. After that, you need to renew support every year."
"It is cheaper than other solutions."
"We used a 60-day trial with ten hours of work per month."
"The tool is not cheap."
"Pricing for Tricentis NeoLoad could be cheaper because, at the moment, it's expensive. For a year, the solution cost us a lot of money, in particular, more than $50,000."
"The solution requires an annual license."
"The solution is quite expensive."
"NeoLoad now has a much more flexible licensing process."
"The vendor offers flexible licensing options"
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Comparison Review

it_user104961 - PeerSpot reviewer
Penetration and Neoload Tester at a university with 501-1,000 employees
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
19%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise49
 

Questions from the Community

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Do you recommend Tricentis NeoLoad?
I highly recommend Tricentis NeoLoad for companies that are in need of a versatile load and performance testing tool. This relatively inexpensive solution is recognized by organizations like Oxford...
What is your primary use case for Neotys NeoLoad?
My relationship with Tricentis NeoLoad is that I implemented it during a trial period, and then they implemented some solution on the basis of Tricentis NeoLoad. We tested both virtual infrastructu...
What do you like most about Tricentis NeoLoad?
The most valuable feature of Tricentis NeoLoad for us has been its ability to easily monitor all the load generators and configure the dynamics and data rates. Additionally, we can monitor individu...
 

Also Known As

Rational Performance Tester
NeoLoad, Neotys NeoLoad
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

andagon, Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Oregon
Dell, H&R Block, Best Buy, Orange, Verizon Wireless, ING, Mazda, Siemens, University of Oxford
Find out what your peers are saying about OpenText, IDERA, Tricentis and others in Test Management Tools. Updated: March 2026.
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