Locust vs OpenText LoadRunner

Free and open source

Quote on request

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

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

OSS community · since 2011

Established

OpenText · since 1993

• Test scenarios are plain Python, so any logic is expressible without workarounds.
• Distributed mode is conceptually simple and works well on Kubernetes.
• Live web UI is useful during an exploratory ramp-up.

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

• Python's per-user overhead is higher than k6 or Gatling; big loads need more machines.
• Reporting is basic — plan on exporting to Grafana.
• HTTP-centric; other protocols require writing your own client.

• 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.

Python teams who want load scenarios expressed in their own language.

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