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OpenText Professional Performance Engineering (LoadRunner Professional) vs SmartBear LoadNinja comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 19, 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

OpenText Professional Perfo...
Ranking in Performance Testing Tools
4th
Ranking in Load Testing Tools
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
81
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SmartBear LoadNinja
Ranking in Performance Testing Tools
11th
Ranking in Load Testing Tools
10th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Performance Testing Tools category, the mindshare of OpenText Professional Performance Engineering (LoadRunner Professional) is 13.9%, up from 13.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SmartBear LoadNinja is 1.8%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Performance Testing Tools
 

Featured Reviews

HelenSague - PeerSpot reviewer
A sophisticated tool that supports many languages and works with all kinds of applications
I do not have any big challenges with LoadRunner. I only have some issues with load generators. It is a very common issue, and I hope it will be resolved in the latest release. For example, when we start to run our tests, users get the message that the load generator exceeded 80% of the CPU utilization. Even when the number of users is less, we get these messages. I am trying to resolve it, but it is not going. It is annoying. It is not a failure, but I hope that it will be resolved. IBM WebSphere MQ testing can be a bit challenging. It can handle that, but I hope that they will build more and more capabilities. We do a huge amount of testing for messaging. Just like aviation, the railway industry is based on messaging. There is messaging to build trains and messaging to create some bills. There are many train movements. Everything involves messaging. I wish that it will be developed more for IBM WebSphere testing. Monitoring is okay, but for testing, I currently have to create Java users. I have to load a lot of libraries from IBM WebSphere and so on.
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 reporting is very good in regard to scripting and debugging."
"The most valuable feature depends on what we're doing at the time. In the past, the greatest feature was the ability to record and play back to produce a script. Another great feature is that we can monitor the system. They also support many protocols to perform load testing."
"It uses high-level languages like Java, CVC, and CCL."
"It provides clients with an understanding of application and system performance."
"The ability to do multithreading. That's available in any performance testing tool, but the number of protocols that this particular tool supports has been very good."
"My favorite feature in LoadRunner Professional is its ability to group scripts under separate IDs."
"The most useful aspect of the solution is that it provides agents in different geographic locations."
"I recommend LoadRunner Professional as it supports many protocols and applications and is very easy to set up and use."
"We are happy with the technical support."
"It's a very simple tool for performance testing."
"SmartBear LoadNinja is easy to use and implement."
 

Cons

"The solution is very costly. The cost is very high, especially considering a lot of other resources are available now and they are less expensive. For a small organization, it is very difficult to sustain the costs involved in having the solution or the related fees"
"The only scenario we see a complexity is when we have single-page applications where JavaScript is talking to the server and coming back. That's the only scenario where we find some difficulties."
"Technical support needs to be faster, and the pricing should be more competitive."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is low, and ten is high-quality technical support, I rate the support a one."
"The technical support of Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional could improve. I had an issue with the licensing and their response time is slow. They can improve on this in the future."
"I would like them to lower the licensing cost and provide better support."
"The reporting and GUI have room for improvement."
"The tool needs to work on capture script feature."
"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

"LoadRunner is more expensive than some competing products."
"LoadRunner Professional's licensing costs are on the higher side, apart from the Community Edition."
"Pricing depends on our choices because it depends on what type of protocol we are getting, what type of licensing we are getting, and what kind of relationships we have with HP and Micro Focus."
"It is reasonable. We pay the cost, but we have everything. We have a big set of licenses for SAP and other applications. We have all kinds of licenses."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is low and ten is a high price, I rate the solution a five."
"I would rate the solution's pricing a nine out of ten."
"When you compare the cost of other tools such as NeoLoad and LoadNinja, the cost of LoadRunner is on the expensive side. As a result, we are currently considering going with NeoLoad."
"There is a licensing cost that is expensive."
"Certainly, the cost could be reduced."
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Comparison Review

it_user104961 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
16%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
13%
Healthcare Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional?
When designing a workload model offers a good range of possibilities for creating goal-oriented scenarios, which helps us understand and meet SLAs.
What needs improvement with Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional?
I would like to improve OpenText LoadRunner Professional based on what we discussed in our last discussion, as those points remain similar and applicable. For future updates, I would like to see th...
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

Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional, Micro Focus LoadRunner, HPE LoadRunner, LoadRunner
SmartBear LoadComplete
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

JetBlue, GOME, Australian Red Cross Blood Service, RMIT University, Virgin Media
Falafel Software
Find out what your peers are saying about OpenText Professional Performance Engineering (LoadRunner Professional) vs. SmartBear LoadNinja and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.
859,438 professionals have used our research since 2012.