Artillery vs OpenText LoadRunner

Free and open source

Quote on request

Open source and free, including distributed runs on your own AWS account. You pay AWS, not Artillery.

Licensed by peak virtual users with protocol bundles priced separately. Historically among the most expensive tools in testing.

Everything, self-hosted

Community edition with a 50-virtual-user limit.

Widely used

Artillery Software · since 2015

Established

OpenText · since 1993

• Distributed load on your own AWS account, so no per-virtual-user vendor pricing at all.
• Reuses Playwright scripts for browser-level load without rewriting journeys.
• YAML for simple scenarios, JavaScript when you need real logic.

• The broadest protocol coverage available anywhere.
• Extremely mature analysis and correlation tooling.
• Accepted by enterprise architecture and audit functions without argument.

• Serverless distribution requires AWS knowledge and IAM setup.
• Reporting is basic without exporting to an observability platform.
• Smaller community than k6 or JMeter.

• Very expensive, and the protocol-bundle licensing model is hard to predict.
• Dated tooling and a steep learning curve; specialists are a distinct job role.
• Poor fit for continuous, developer-run performance testing.

AWS-native teams that want large-scale load tests without vendor VU pricing.

Large enterprises with legacy protocol requirements and an existing performance-engineering team.