Feature checklists rarely decide anything. What decides it is the pricing metric, who has to write the tests, and which limitation you can live with.
Entry price
Free and open source
Open sourceFrom $149 per month (indicative entry plan)
Free tierWhat drives the bill
The metric that actually scales your invoice.
Free and open source. You pay in engineering time and CI minutes.
Priced by concurrent virtual users. Large enterprise tests are a substantial annual commitment.
Free tier
Everything, self-hosted
Free tier with a small virtual-user cap and limited test duration.
Open source
MIT
Self-hostable
No-code authoring
Languages
Platforms
Fits teams
Adoption
Established
OSS community · since 2013
Widely used
Broadcom · since 2011
Strengths
Limitations
Best for
Backend engineers who want rigorous constant-rate measurements of an endpoint.
Enterprises with existing JMeter estates that need scale and reporting without building it.
Pricing last reviewed August 2026 and is indicative only — confirm on each vendor’s own page.