JMeter vs SoapUI

SoapUI has built-in support for mocking web services. This makes it an ideal tool for testing and validating web services without relying on the actual service implementation. In contrast, JMeter is primarily a performance testing tool without native support for mocking web services. But this limitation can be easily overcome by using JMeter with other tools such as WireMock. In this aspect, it has been working well for us in Cleverbee to test with the JMeter and create mock services in SoapUI.

When it comes to flow control or planning, JMeter has a simple and intuitive interface for creating test plans and controlling the flow of requests. Even though JMeter is sometimes criticized for its limitation in terms of conditional logic and branching (which may make it challenging to create complex test scenarios), its workflow control is highly regarded for its simplicity and ease of use. On the other hand, SoapUI workflow control options are considered very limited and difficult to use.

Another important difference between JMeter and SoapUI is the ability to test performance. JMeter is well known for its ability to scale and handle large volumes of traffic. It can simulate thousands of concurrent users and generate comprehensive reports on response time, throughput and error rates. JMeter is intended primarily for performance testing, making it a great choice when testing the performance of web services under heavy load. SoapUI, in contrast, is more focused on functional testing and has limited performance testing capabilities. Although SoapUI can simulate concurrent users, it isn't optimised to handle the same load as JMeter.

Both SoapUI and JMeter support a variety of plugins that can be used to extend their functionality. JMeter offers free and paid plugins for monitoring server performance, generating load, and integrating with third-party tools. Similarly, SoapUI supports free and paid plugins for security testing, compliance testing, and more. Plugins can be a powerful way to customize these tools to meet your specific testing needs.

To sum it up, both JMeter and SoapUI are very useful testing tools with unique strengths. JMeter is great for performance testing but can‘t be used to create mock services. In contrast, creating mock services is still where SoapUI finds its use. Both JMeter or SoapUI are suitable for functional testing, but in Cleverbee we do prefer to use JMeter. We find the free version of SoapUP less user friendly and less convenient for the development than JMeter. But its paid version, called ReadyAPI, might be a different story. Hopefully we will try it soon and write about it more. But for now we are more than satisfied with JMeter!