Additive manufacturing of injection moulding tools is well known in the plastics industry. In the field of prototyping soft tools are commonly used to produce a small number of components from the original polymer in injection moulding. The technology can cut time-to-market and is easy to handle compared to milling processes. The current amounts of plastic parts which should be producible with these soft tools are in the range from 1 to 5000 parts. However, the conventional manufacturing of aluminium moulds is still a coequal competitor in injection moulding prototyping. Therefore, a study was set up to compare these two technologies. In this context, a soft tool and a hard tool were manufactured. For the part design, a compilation of different test specimens was chosen. The fabricated injection moulded part includes a tensile specimen for mechanical testing and a plate to determine shrinkage. For the determination of the flow behaviour, two meanders and a step plate were added. The soft tool was manufactured by laser sintering from an acrylic-based material, whereas the hard tool was manufactured by milling from aluminium EN AW 7075 (AlZn5,5MgCu – 3.4365). The aim of this work was, to get significant statements regarding cooling times, durability and costs. The cooling time was evaluated with a thermographic measurement system. The durability was determined via defined visual quality characters and was classified into five failure categories. In this regard, a standardized test procedure is introduced. This includes the evaluation of the most important injection moulding parameters and the definition of critical values.