Comparison of Performance Testing Tools

Performance testing is gradually gaining in popularity with many organizations. Performance testing tools and frameworks such as JMeter and Gatling can be an excellent benefit to any QA effort in giving you more in-depth insight in the way the application or web service is performing under load. However, when choosing a performance testing tool there are many factors need to be considered when assessing which one is best for you and your project.

There are few other places in the software development world that provide as much joy as building an awesome performance testing tool. For this article, I’m going to compare some of the most popular open source tools used today. The list includes Apache JMeter, SOASTA BrickServer, Savvius OmniPeek, and Nagios XI.

LoadNinja

LoadNinja by SmartBear allows you to quickly create scriptless sophisticated load tests, reduces testing time by 50%, replaces load emulators with real browsers, and get actionable, browser-based metrics, all at ninja speed.

You can easily capture client-side interactions, debug in real-time, and identify performance problems immediately. LoadNinja empowers teams to increase their test coverage without sacrificing quality by removing the tedious efforts of dynamic correlation, script translation, and script scrubbing.

With LoadNinja, engineers, testers and product teams can focus more on building apps that scale and focus less on building load testing scripts.

Features:

Scriptless load test creation & playback with InstaPlay recorder.
Real browser load test execution at scale.
VU Debugger – debug tests in real-time.
VU Inspector – manage virtual user activity in real-time.
Hosted on the cloud, no server machine & upkeep required.
Sophisticated browser-based metrics with analytics and reporting features.

ReadyAPI Performance

SmartBear offers an all-in-one automated API Testing Platform called ReadyAPI. It contains various tools like Swagger & SwaggerHub, SoapUI NG, ReadyAPI Performance, Secure Pro, ServiceV, and AlertSite.

ReadyAPI Performance is an API tool for load testing. This API testing tool will assure you that your APIs can perform anywhere. It will let you install load agents on any server or cloud as well as on-premise. It provides advanced performance metrics for load test runs.

SoapUI NG is a tool for functional testing and you can use these functional testing use cases designed in the SOAPUI for performance testing.

This load testing tool will help you with testing the speed, scalability, and performance of the APIs, Servers, and Network Resources. It has features of flexible load generation, parallel API load tests, server monitoring, and pre-built load templates.

WebLOAD

WebLOAD is an enterprise-scale load testing solution capable of generating reliable, real life load scenarios, even for the most complex systems, with smart analytics providing performance insights.

WebLOAD is based on a flexible platform with built in support for hundreds of technologies and integration with many tools from CI/CD pipelines to monitoring.

WebLOAD Features:

WebLOAD is offered on the Cloud (SAAS) or as an On-Prem deployment
Flexible test scenario creation
Smart Scripting based native JavaScript with Powerful correlation, parametrization and validation engines
Supports every major web technology and easily extendible
Automatic bottleneck detection
Easy-to-reach customer support.

Micro Focus LoadRunner

This is a Micro Focus product which can be used as a Performance Testing tool. This can be bought as a Micro Focus product from its Micro Focus software division. Also, it is very much useful in understanding and determining the performance and outcome of the system when there is an actual load.

One of the key attractive features of this testing tool is that it can create and handle thousands of users at the same time.

This tool enables you to gather all the required information with respect to the performance and is also based on the infrastructure. LoadRunner comprises of different tools – namely, Virtual User Generator, Controller, Load Generator and Analysis.

System Requirements: Microsoft Windows and Linux are the favorable OS for this measuring tool.

HP Performance Tester (LoadRunner)

This is an enterprise performance testing version of Loadrunner and a platform enabled both global standardization and formation Performance CoE.

Features:

Lower the cost of distributed load testing
Scale from single projects to a full-scale testing Center of Excellence (CoEs) that consolidates hardware, standardizes best practices, and leverages global testing resources
Reduce the risk of deploying systems that do not meet performance requirements through the use of effective enterprise load tester tool
It is one of the best performance testing tools that lowers hardware and software costs by accurately predicting system capacity
Pinpoint the root cause of application performance problems quickly and accurately
It is one of the Effective performance test tools for utilization tracking
Browser based access to global test resources and optimal usage of load generator farm.

NeoLoad

NeoLoad is the most automated performance testing platform for enterprise organizations that continuously test applications and APIs. NeoLoad provides testers and developers automatic test design and maintenance, the most realistic simulation of user behavior, fast root cause analysis and built-in integrations with the entire SDLC toolchain.

NeoLoad lets you reuse and share test assets and results from functional testing tools to analytics and metrics from APM tools. NeoLoad supports a full range of mobile, web and packaged applications, like SAP, to cover all testing needs.

Continuously schedule, manage and share test resources and results across the organization to ensure application performance.

System Requirements: This tool is compatible with operating systems like Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Solaris.

SmartMeter.io

SmartMeter.io is an alternative to JMeter and aims to fix its drawbacks. It is one of the best load testing tools that allows for easy scriptless test scenario creation using the so-called Recorder, yet still lets you make advanced edits of the test. It also excels in test reporting and makes use of functions such as automatic test criteria evaluation, test runs comparison and trend analysis. It fully supports CI/CD integration. Available for Windows, Mac OS, and Linux.