Rapise vs. OpenText UFT

Rapise vs. OpenText: Automated Testing Software Comparison for 2026

Inflectra and OpenText both have powerful automated testing platforms, but they have diverged in recent years. Both provide formidable test automation capabilities and industry-leading QA tools. However, OpenText Functional Testing (previously known as OpenText UFT One, Micro Focus UFT, HP UFT, and HP QTP) has been rebranded and acquired multiple times, constantly changing its functionalities, integrations, and pricing availability. Rapise has continued on its trajectory to become an innovator and top performer for AI-powered workflows, comprehensive test coverage, and accessible licensing.

Key Takeaways of Rapise vs. OpenText:

• Script Language Choice: Rapise uses JavaScript as its primary language (with RVL for its visual builder), while OpenText still uses VBScript. Devs already familiar with VBScript may be fine with OpenText, but JavaScript is much more widely adopted.

• Ecosystem Lock-In: Both platforms push users towards an established ecosystem (UFT towards OpenText ALM/Quality Center and Rapise towards Spira). However, the Spira ecosystem is much more open and integrates more easily with other tools like Jenkins, Azure DevOps, and Jira.

• Incorporation of AI: Both platforms have integrated AI features, but OpenText uses AI primarily to “see” objects and elements better. Rapise incorporates Inflectra.ai to help “think” by generating test steps, writing code, and performing other context-aware tasks.

• Total Cost of Ownership: The opaque pricing tiers and required add-ons of OpenText’s platform typically make it more expensive than an initial quote or demo may indicate. Rapise is often more cost-effective, requiring far fewer add-ons and providing a faster ROI.

• Agility vs. Legacy: UFT tends to be a relatively “safe” choice for teams that use a very large and older regression suite. More agile testing would likely benefit from the flexibility and modern coverage of Rapise.

Rapise & OpenText: Comparison Overview

Key Advantages of Rapise

• Modern & Flexible Scripting Languages: Rapise uses JavaScript and Rapise Visual Language, which are both intuitive and much more modern/easy-to-use than OpenText’s old VBScript.

• Scriptless Automation Out of the Box: Rapise comes with an integrated scriptless testing framework that supports data-driven loop/conditional logic without 3rd-party add-ons.

• Broader Build-In Capabilities: Rapise includes more tools and features than the base version of OpenText UFT, which often requires tiered add-ons for different tech stacks, mobile testing, etc.

• More Advanced Object Recognition: Rapise’s AI-driven, context-aware object recognition and self-healing tests are more advanced than OpenText, facilitating more stable tests as UI shifts.

• Pricing Transparency: Rapise has straightforward and transparent pricing, while OpenText doesn’t provide any public information on theirs. Based on older versions of the UFT platform, Rapise was still more affordable.

Key Advantages of OpenText UFT (a.k.a. OpenText Functional Testing)

• Strong Documentation Ecosystem: UFT’s long history means that it has extensive product documentation and best practices — just ensure you’re looking at OpenText’s current documentation and not Micro Focus’s, HP’s, or Astra’s.

• Mature Parallel Test Execution: OpenText has scalable parallel test execution across environments, helping large teams accelerate regression cycles.

• Designed for Enterprise: OpenText is specifically built for large enterprises, making it suitable for some of these environments (but comes with drawbacks that make it less than ideal for non-enterprise customers).

Thorough Comparison of Rapise & OpenText for Automated Testing: 10 Decisive Factors & Differences

Now let’s take a closer look at some key features and characteristics of both tools, comparing them across important decision criteria for modern automated testing software.

1. Object Identification

Rapise offers powerful, AI-driven object recognition that supports both modern GUI technologies (e.g. .NET, WPF, UWP, Silverlight, Web Applications, iOS, Android, and Qt), as well as older technologies (e.g. MFC, ATL, C++, AWT, SWT, and Swing). In addition, Rapise includes support for 3rd-party controls such as Infragistics, DevExpress, Telerik, and ComponentOne. The SPY tools in Rapise make identification and recording of complex objects easy, with no need to manually write code just to access the right object in the hierarchy.

Rapise is also fully extensible, with all of the object libraries written in JavaScript so that you can easily expand and adapt it to meet even the toughest automation challenges:

OpenText UFT has fairly basic (but still AI-driven) object identification capabilities, with support mainly for the older Windows technologies. Its object recognition during recording tends to be more brittle, requiring more manual effort to record the correct object and ensure that it will be reliable for your automation project (which somewhat defeats the purpose of automated object identification).

2. Scriptless Testing

Rapise comes with a complete, integrated scriptless test automation framework (called Rapise Visual Language, or RVL) that can be used to record tests. It’s also an easy way for less technical users to create automation scripts quickly and easily. The RVL framework is a complete methodology for writing tests, with support for executing automation actions, performing verifications and checkpoints, executing commands against a map of data (data-driven testing), and performing condition and looping actions.

OpenText UFT comes with a visual editor as well, but it is limited to keyword-driven and basic actions. From our experience, most customers looking for a true scriptless framework end up purchasing a 3rd-party commercial solution that extends the OpenText platform (such as Axe or Qualitia).

3. Plugins Needed for Different Technologies

Rapise includes support for all technologies right out of the box, no add-ons or plugins needed. It also includes support for different GUI technologies (MFC, .NET, WPF, Java, Swing, Qt), mobile devices (iOS and Android), web applications (all browsers), and web services (SOAP and REST).

On the other hand, OpenText attempts to monetize its support for different GUI interfaces. For users who want Java detection, they’ll need to purchase an add-on (and same for web services, ActiveX, Web, .NET, WPF, etc.). For mobile, a completely separate product and license is required — OpenText Functional Testing Lab for Mobile and Web.

4. Test Scripts Legibility

Rapise has a smart and easy-to-read test automation code style because it either uses standard JavaScript or our codeless RVL testing language.

This makes use of the Rapise object repository, which separates GUI and API identification information from the automation code. The code is easy to read, object-oriented, and therefore easy to understand and extend by devs and automation engineers alike.

Rapise also exclusively uses open formats (JSON, XML, TAP) with no proprietary or binary data files in your tests. All tests, configuration, and report files are open for inspection in a simple text editor. Even the grid-based RVL scripts use XLS as the underlying format and may be easily opened in Microsoft Excel.

Unfortunately, OpenText UFT tends to have the object identification and action code intertwined, making it more difficult to separate out the objects from the test activities and verification. This results in test script code that is harder to understand and maintain as it evolves over time.

5. Scripting Language

Rapise uses standard JavaScript — the most widespread scripting language in the world and familiar to front-end developers, web designers, test engineers, and NodeJS programmers. JavaScript is the ideal language because it’s object-oriented, modular, and extensible, with support for functions, prototypes, callbacks, and global/local variables.

On top of this, Rapise extends standard JavaScript to provide intellisense and type safety using a special comment syntax that allows testers to document the data types being used.

OpenText still uses the old and Microsoft-developed VBScript language, which supports classes but not polymorphism and inheritance. It also has no support for public or global variables, and Microsoft even announced the language’s depreciation in early 2024 (and OpenText has still not released their promised Python scripting support yet). Functions called in the Function Library or called Actions break this scope and have no access to these variables, unless you use a Windows registry hack. In addition, VBScript is not object-oriented, has weak exception handling, relies on obsolete technologies (such as ActiveX), and is not widely known outside of existing UFT users.

6. Browser Compatibility

Rapise has powerful web testing functionality, with an integrated cross-browser DOM viewer, object SPY, and XPATH / CSS query engine:

When you record tests with Rapise, it uses object identification to record which objects use the most appropriate XPATH query for the web browser object (as well as the option to use a CSS selector instead). Rapise can natively connect to Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, and Internet Explorer. In addition, using its integration with Selenium WebDriver, Rapise can connect to Opera and “headless” cloud browsers such as PhantomJS and Selenium Grid.

OpenText UFT can also connect to Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari, and Internet Explorer. However, it cannot connect to other browsers like Opera and PhantomJS without upgrades or additional extensibility kits to work with non-standard or niche browsers.

7. Test Management Integrations

Rapise is designed to be easy to integrate into your overall development operations (DevOps) and testing operations (TestOps) environment. Rapise works with a variety of continuous integration services such as Jenkins, TeamCity, and Azure DevOps Services. On top of this, Rapise also works seamlessly with SpiraTest, enabling integrated test script versioning, distributed test scheduling, execution, and enterprise reporting:

The integration works right out of the box, with no plugins or add-ons necessary. SpiraTest’s integration with Rapise creates a centralized repository of test cases, test scripts, execution results, and real-time scheduling and execution. The reporting tools enable you to store and analyze thousands of test runs, including screenshots and log files.

This isn’t the end of Rapise’s integrations — we designed Rapise to be an open test automation platform, so it can just as easily work with other test management systems. For example, customers using Azure DevOps can easily use Rapise, with full integration between Rapise and Azure Test Plans services:

In contrast, OpenText has a complex test repository structure that makes version control and test management difficult unless you also purchase the associated OpenText ALM/Quality Center AQM product.

Similarly, OpenText UFT is hard to use with Continuous Integration (CI) platforms because the Test Execution engine is combined with the GUI Test Code IDE.

8. Exception Handling & Debugging

Rapise includes a powerful, integrated script debugger that makes it easy to troubleshoot and diagnose when automated tests don’t behave as expected:

This Rapise debugger supports breakpoints, stepping through the code, watching variables, and dynamically viewing the values inside the code window through integrated tooltips. Plus, the use of JavaScript as the underlying automation language makes exception handling easier, with support for nested exception blocks and modern exception handling with private/public/global variable scope.

Unfortunately, user reports indicate that the OpenText UFT debugger leaves a lot to be desired. For example, there is no way to view the call chain and see the line of execution that is currently executing, and you can’t skip lines of execution, step over code, or control the flow.

Due to OpenText still using VBScript as its automation language, the exception handling options are limited. You can skip the next line of execution, run a separate function, or fail the test only. In other words, there isn’t a way to use nested exceptions resulting in headache-inducing code to simulate a similar outcome.

9. Customer Service

Rapise comes with Inflectra’s world-class technical support. We provide multiple channels for getting help, including our support forums, knowledge base, and expertly-manned help desk.

We also maintain a large (and continuously updated) collection of webinars, instructional videos, and whitepapers to ensure customer success. In addition, we conduct live web meeting consultations with users to ensure their tests work as expected. Our development team frequently hosts live webinars with users to get feedback on the product and provide live tips and tricks for dealing with edge cases.

Talking to OpenText users who have switched to Inflectra, it sounds like support for UFT is lacking. They tell us that the easiest way to resolve problems is to post or search in non-affiliated forums because the official support website is messy, with patches coming from one location, and answers to support questions from another. Alternatively, more recent resolutions have come from AI platforms like Claude, since troubleshooting with a 3rd-party chatbot is apparently more effective than OpenText’s actual customer support.

10. Long-Term Ownership & Support

Inflectra is 100% committed to Rapise. As stated on our website, “We're dedicated to making the best tools we can for developers, testers, and planners everywhere.” We stand behind Rapise every day, releasing new versions every quarter and providing an ecosystem of add-ons, extensions, and companion products (SpiraTest, SpiraTeam, SpiraPlan, KronoDesk, Inflectra.ai). In addition, our development team releases sample frameworks and examples on GitHub to show how Rapise can be used in different settings.

Compare that to OpenText Functional Testing, previously known as OpenText UFT One, previously known as Micro Focus UFT, previously known as HP Unified Functional Testing (UFT), previously known as HP Quick Test Pro (QTP), previously known as Astra QuickTest. Why risk using a platform that continues to be passed around as if no one wants it?

Bonus Factor: Affordability

We believe that high-quality software should be affordable and accessible for organizations of all sizes, from the smallest startup to the largest enterprise. We also believe that it should be easy and transparent to find out what the pricing is. If you are looking at an automation project for 5 developers writing automated tests and the need to execute the tests on 20 different computers, the pricing estimate would be:

If you compare the functionality, accessibility, and pricing for Rapise vs. OpenText, the difference becomes very clear.

Rapise vs. OpenText: Which is the Better Fit For Your Automated Testing?

At the end of the day, different teams and different circumstances will dictate which platform is the right fit. However, the simple fact that their product has changed hands every few years and still isn’t very competitive on functionality (let alone that they seem to be hiding pricing information) makes Rapise a more appealing automated testing software. Its AI-enhanced features like test generation, synthetic data creation, risk predictions, mitigation suggestions, and much more, put it ahead of OpenText Functional Testing/UFT and other software testing tools.

Explore Rapise with the links below, or request a demo to see how it can upgrade your testing pipeline today:

• Learn about Rapise’s features

• See what platforms Rapise supports

• Read common FAQs about Rapise

• Hear from Rapise users

• Start a free 30-day trial of Rapise

DISCLAIMER: All information regarding the compared products has been made on the basis of information available on the product websites, from former customers, and analysis of trial installations of the product. The analysis and views expressed in this section and the information made available are purely those of Inflectra Corporation. It is possible that the compared products have additional features not mentioned in this whitepaper.