OpenText LoadRunner vs Vegeta

Quote on request

Free and open source

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

Free and open source. You pay in engineering time and CI minutes.

Community edition with a 50-virtual-user limit.

Everything, self-hosted

Established

OpenText · since 1993

Established

OSS community · since 2013

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

• Constant-rate model avoids the coordinated-omission problem that distorts VU-based tools.
• Single static binary, trivial to run anywhere.
• Composable output for scripting and pipelines.

• 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.

• No scenarios or session state — one target list, one rate.
• No GUI or built-in reporting beyond plots.
• Go library usage required for anything sophisticated.

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

Backend engineers who want rigorous constant-rate measurements of an endpoint.