This research provides a comprehensive comparison between microwave (MW) and conductive heating (CH) sludge pretreatments under identical heating/cooling profiles at below and above boiling point temperatures. Previous comparison studies were constrained to an uncontrolled or a single heating rate due to lack of a CH equipment simulating MW under identical thermal profiles. In this research, a novel custom-built pressure-sealed vessel which could simulate MW pretreatment under identical heating/cooling profiles was used for CH pretreatment. No statistically significant difference was proven between MW and CH pretreatments in terms of sludge solubilization, anaerobic biogas yield and organics biodegradation rate (p-value > 0.05), while statistically significant effects of temperature and heating rate were observed (p-value < 0.05). These results explain the contradictory results of previous studies in which only the final temperature (not heating/cooling rates) was controlled. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.