Product Comparisons
Apache JMeter
This chart shows a list of the differences between Web Performance Load Tester™ and Apache JMeter 2.9 to the best of our knowledge.
| Feature | Load Tester | JMeter |
|---|---|---|
| Server Capacity Analysis | Statistical analysis measures how many users your website can handle. | No |
| Create a Testcase | Record a testcase by interacting with your site in your browser. The number of simultaneous sockets is recorded, along with inter-socket dependencies. | Records HTTP requests that are serialized as if requested by a single socket. Page grouping must be done by hand for each page using a tedious cut and paste process. |
| Web Page Load Times | Exactly simulates and records web page load times as with a real browser. As the load ramps up, min, max, average, as well as percentiles of every web page and URL are recorded. | Measured web page load times are off by an order of magnitude because there is no browser simulation. Only the measurements of individual URLs are accurate. Min, max, and average values are calculcated for the entire test, not by load level making it difficult to see how performance changes with load. |
| Correlation of Dynamic Fields | Automatic and extensible for most cases. | Manual (except for cookies). Any correlation must be done by hand. |
| .NET VIEWSTATE support | Automatic | Manual |
| Multiple Socket Connections | Modern browsers open up to eight simultaneous socket connections per server . Load Tester executes a testcase using the same number of socket connections as the browser did during recording. | Supports only a single socket connection - resulting in innacurate reporting of total web page duration and grossly inaccurate site capacity. If a web server is limited by socket resources, the performance can be off by a factor of 8. |
| SSL Support | Records and plays back SSL, including client certificates. | No client certificate support. |
| Server Monitoring | Load Tester's Advanced Server Agents can monitor dozens of critical metrics on Windows (including .NET) and Linux. | None. |
| Multiple Simultaneous Test Cases | Multiple test cases can be combined into a load profile based on percentages, where each case can be a different percentage of the total load and have other unique settings. For example, 20% of the users could be searching via modems, 20% searching via DSL, 20% making a purchase, etc. | Only a single test case can run at one time. |
| View and Compare content | A built-in viewer shows the pages as recorded and when replayed. Replays and failed pages can be easily compared to the original recording. | No built-in viewer. |
| Support | Load Testing experts immediately available on the phone during office hours. | Google and user groups |
| Data Analysis | Extensive reports give a clear picture of all aspects of the performance of your site. Data can be viewed by time or summarized by user level. Results can be analyzed against performance goals, which can be set for the testcase and customized for each page and url. | Records URL duration and errors. Simple tables and charts. |
| Slow Page Identification | Sorted web page duration report identifies which pages are slow and under what conditions. | No |
| Think Time | By default, uses recorded think time for each web page. Can be customized to vary the think time randomly or use no think time. | Think times must be configured manually. |
| Usernames & Passwords | Authentication wizard automatically detects and configures usernames and passwords for form field, NTML (Windows Domain), client certificate, and basic authentication. | Supports form field and basic authentication, but they must be configured by hand by editing each URL. |
| Bandwidth Simulation | Virtual users can connect to the web server using different simulated bandwidths. With a load profile 50% of the users could connect using a DSL bandwidth, and 50% with 56K modem bandwidths. | No |
| ETag support | Yes | No |
| Automatically validate 304 respones | Yes | No |
| Measures Waiting Users | Yes | No |
| Multiple Load Ramping Styles | Yes | No. Only a simple ramp is supported. |
| Supports The Cloud | Yes | Yes, using an external service. |
| Load Generation Capacity | Load Tester's highly tuned I/O engine can simulate more than 3500 users on a single computer. 2,000 users is typical for moderately complex testcases on modern hardware. | A simple 6 web page test with images and think time between pages consumed 90% of the CPU at only 50 concurrent users. |
| Load Accuracy | The performance and memory usage of all test computers is monitored to insure accurate performance measurements. While controlling multiple computers the task of simulating users is load balanced among them using dynamic performance measurements of the test computers. | No |
| Multiple IP Addresses | Each virtual user can come from a different IP address. |
No |
| NTLM | Automatically supported in both recording and playback. | No |
| Session Tracking | The following session techniques are automatically detected and configured via a wizard:
Cookies URL rewriting URL parameter Hidden Form Field |
Session tracking must be detected and configured by hand by inserting controllers. |