STATIC COMPARISON / TIER B
LoadRunner Professional vs wrk
Answer LoadRunner Professional is a commercial, self-hosted enterprise performance suite from OpenText, scripted in C, JavaScript, C#. wrk is an open source, self-hosted micro-benchmark CLI from wg / community, scripted in C, Lua. The practical split is the cost model: LoadRunner Professional is commercial, wrk is open source.
Curator verdict
Both cover HTTP, HTTPS. On recorded coverage LoadRunner Professional is the wider of the two (6 protocols against 2), which matters only if your workload actually uses the extra ones. Budget and procurement usually settle LoadRunner Professional against wrk before any benchmark does. Run the same scenario on both before you standardize; the rows below only tell you what is true on paper.
Spec matrix
| Field | LoadRunner Professional | wrk |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | OpenText | wg / community |
| Category | Enterprise Suite | Micro-benchmark CLI |
| License | Commercial | Open Source |
| Deployment | Self-hosted | Self-hosted |
| Status | Active | Active |
| First released | 1993 | 2012 |
| Pricing | Commercial license; request a quote. | Free; Apache License 2.0. |
| Scripting | C, JavaScript, C# | C, Lua |
| Protocols | HTTP, HTTPS, WebSocket, SAP, Citrix, Oracle | HTTP, HTTPS |
| OS support | Windows, Linux | macOS, Linux |
How to choose
- Choose LoadRunner Professional if you can fund a commercial license for vendor support (Commercial license; request a quote).
- Choose wrk if you need a free, self-supported stack (Free; Apache License 2.0).
- Only LoadRunner Professional records support for WebSocket, SAP, Citrix — one hard requirement there decides the pair on its own.
- Match the authoring language to the team: LoadRunner Professional means C, JavaScript, C#, wrk means C, Lua.
- Open the Test Rig to compare license, deployment, protocol and OS rows side by side.
Need more than two tools or a shareable matrix? Use the live Test Rig from the directory compare tray.
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