Performance/Load Testing Tools: What are the options?
This is a question for the QA testers out there. For those doing performance testing what are the other options that you looked at besides LoadRunner? Did you consider open source solutions like JMeter? Any insight would be helpful.
Senior Manager of Engineering at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Real User
May 10, 2014
I have worked on JMeter, LoadRunner, AppLoader, LoadUI and SoapUIPro for web services. What I have observed is HP is far ahead in terms of the user friendliness, reporting, wide range of protocol support. There are own merits and demerits of all tools and all depends on the project requirement.. Whereas among free tools, JMeter is definitely the best option.
Thanks for the feedback everyone. A few people wrote me on LinkedIn to check out Radview radview.com/ Looks like they have around a long time. Any feedback on their tools?
Silvia I strongly support Dimitri as for instance a Severity 1 ticket logged would be taking a week for HP to resolve the issue in spite of HP's 24X7 support and world wide availability. However in LR12 some new improvements have been made. For WebSocket testing JMeter is best.
Dimitri, you are of course entitled to your own opinion, but I'm wonder on what basis you can say whether a product is popular. Also, I've timed it and LoadRunner installs in 15 minutes. It does take longer than JMeter because LoadRunner comes with all pre-requisites built-in. One does not also need to download and install a JDK, etc. As for documentation, I hope that you'll take a look at LoadRunner before you make up your mind. HP has a team of people who worked on it. Not only that, HP provides 24 hour support to LoadRunner license holders. Yes, it does cost money to keep professionals standing by and to have dedicated developers rather than hobbyists working on the code.
I'm sorry that you didn't hear that LoadRunner has a much more user-friendly HTML5 web socket support than other products. With LoadRunner, you just type in the URL and it will recognize that async. conversations are occurring and generate scripts accordingly. LoadRunner generates scripts for traditional Poll/Long Poll/ and Push patterns like web sockets.
I invite you to give LoadRunner a try. At hp.com/go/loadrunner, you get 50 free users forever.
Create a TruClient script and compare how much more time it took you versus pouring over cryptic logs to figure out the java code necessary. Gatling's sample banking app doesn't process all transactions the last time I looked, But you can use lightstreamer.com/demos for a sample web sockets script.
The ROI for LoadRunner is compelling for a lot of people because HP caters to those who value their time.
Learn what your peers think about OpenText Professional Performance Engineering (LoadRunner Professional). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2026.
Open source solutions like JMeter, Grinder, Gatling and Tsung are absolutely reliable. JMeter is the most popular option as it's very easy to start with, has great official documentation, large community and it can be extended by scripting and plugins. For instance, JMeter is the only tool which does support WebSocket testing
IBM RPT. Also open source tools such as Jmeter are also good, but if you're looking for detailed reporting test with VUsers. For technical support we had to go to LR despite the high cost.
OpenText Professional Performance Engineering, known as LoadRunner Professional, stands out with its powerful scripting tool, flexible capabilities, and extensive analytics, supporting numerous concurrent users for impactful load testing. This performance engineering tool offers integration across systems and strong community support, paired with user-friendly interfaces. It excels in features like multi-protocol support, auto-correlation, and detailed reporting. However, improvements are...
Another performance testing tool comparison review: blazemeter.com/blog/open-source-load-testing-tools-which-one-should-you-use
I have worked on JMeter, LoadRunner, AppLoader, LoadUI and SoapUIPro for web services. What I have observed is HP is far ahead in terms of the user friendliness, reporting, wide range of protocol support. There are own merits and demerits of all tools and all depends on the project requirement.. Whereas among free tools, JMeter is definitely the best option.
Thanks for the feedback everyone. A few people wrote me on LinkedIn to check out Radview radview.com/ Looks like they have around a long time. Any feedback on their tools?
Silvia I strongly support Dimitri as for instance a Severity 1 ticket logged would be taking a week for HP to resolve the issue in spite of HP's 24X7 support and world wide availability. However in LR12 some new improvements have been made. For WebSocket testing JMeter is best.
Dimitri, you are of course entitled to your own opinion, but I'm wonder on what basis you can say whether a product is popular. Also, I've timed it and LoadRunner installs in 15 minutes. It does take longer than JMeter because LoadRunner comes with all pre-requisites built-in. One does not also need to download and install a JDK, etc. As for documentation, I hope that you'll take a look at LoadRunner before you make up your mind. HP has a team of people who worked on it. Not only that, HP provides 24 hour support to LoadRunner license holders. Yes, it does cost money to keep professionals standing by and to have dedicated developers rather than hobbyists working on the code.
I'm sorry that you didn't hear that LoadRunner has a much more user-friendly HTML5 web socket support than other products. With LoadRunner, you just type in the URL and it will recognize that async. conversations are occurring and generate scripts accordingly. LoadRunner generates scripts for traditional Poll/Long Poll/ and Push patterns like web sockets.
I invite you to give LoadRunner a try. At hp.com/go/loadrunner, you get 50 free users forever.
Create a TruClient script and compare how much more time it took you versus pouring over cryptic logs to figure out the java code necessary. Gatling's sample banking app doesn't process all transactions the last time I looked, But you can use lightstreamer.com/demos for a sample web sockets script.
The ROI for LoadRunner is compelling for a lot of people because HP caters to those who value their time.
Hi Dimitri,
Neoload from Neotys also supports WebSocket testing. Good tool but not Opensource.
Kr
Ian
Open source solutions like JMeter, Grinder, Gatling and Tsung are absolutely reliable. JMeter is the most popular option as it's very easy to start with, has great official documentation, large community and it can be extended by scripting and plugins. For instance, JMeter is the only tool which does support WebSocket testing
IBM RPT. Also open source tools such as Jmeter are also good, but if you're looking for detailed reporting test with VUsers. For technical support we had to go to LR despite the high cost.