The invention discloses an SDN (Software-defined networking) controller performance tester and testing method belonging to the field of an SDN controller. The performance tester particularly comprises a switch control part, a protocol message control part and a result output part, wherein the switch control part is formed by connecting a switch simulation module and a topologic connection generation module; the protocol message control part is formed by connecting an OpenFlow 1.3 message generation module and a testing message control module; the result output part consists of a controller response recording module and a result calculation and output module. According to the SDN controller performance tester and testing method disclosed by the invention, aiming at the SDN controller, throughput and time delay of the SDN controller for various OpenFlow 1.3 protocol messages are tested; meanwhile, real scenes and events which possibly occur in a simulative network are simulated, and processing performance of the controller is evaluated; when various network operators, network companies or other network users deploy an SDN network, aiming at type selection, research, deployment testing and ability testing of the controller, technical support and quantitative result analysis can be provided to various network operators, network companies or other network users.