Hyper-V vs VMware vs VirtualBox: licensing, features and which to use

Short answer: Hyper-V and VMware ESXi are both type 1 hypervisors with similar performance, so the choice is mostly licensing and ecosystem. Hyper-V comes with Windows Server and Windows Pro; VMware vSphere is now sold by Broadcom as per-core subscriptions. On a desktop, VMware Workstation Pro and VirtualBox are both free type 2 hypervisors.

Licensing facts below are as of October 2026: VMware’s from Broadcom’s knowledge base and release notes, VirtualBox’s from Oracle’s download page and manual, both read on 21 October 2026, and Windows Server’s from Microsoft’s licensing documentation. VMware’s line-up has changed several times since 2023, so check the vendor’s current terms before you budget. The disk conversions near the end were run with qemu-img 7.2 on Debian 12.

Compare like with like

“Hyper-V vs VMware” can mean two different contests, and most confusion comes from mixing them:

• On servers: the Hyper-V role in Windows Server against VMware ESXi, usually with vCenter on top (together sold as vSphere). Both run directly on the hardware and host production workloads.
• On desktops: client Hyper-V in Windows 10 and 11 Pro, Enterprise and Education against VMware Workstation Pro (Fusion Pro on a Mac) and Oracle VirtualBox. These run test machines next to your normal apps.

Hyper-V is type 1 in both cases: once it is switched on, Windows itself moves into a privileged virtual machine, the root partition, as what is Hyper-V explains. Workstation and VirtualBox are type 2, applications on top of a normal operating system. The hypervisor guide covers what that distinction does and does not mean.

Hyper-V vs VMware vs VirtualBox at a glance

Hyper-V vs VMware ESXi on servers

Architecture and hardware

ESXi carries its own drivers inside its kernel, which is why it only installs on hardware it has drivers for; check the vendor’s compatibility guide before buying, because network cards and storage controllers outside it are a common dead end. Hyper-V leaves drivers to Windows in the root partition, so it runs on nearly anything Windows Server supports. Inside the VMs, both deliver close to native CPU speed through Intel VT-x and AMD-V; disk and network speed depend far more on paravirtual drivers and the storage behind them than on which hypervisor you picked.

Clustering and management

Both move running VMs between hosts and restart them elsewhere when a host fails. VMware does it with vCenter: vMotion for live moves, HA for restarts, DRS for automatic balancing, vSAN for storage spread over the hosts’ disks. Hyper-V does it with Windows Failover Clustering, live migration and Storage Spaces Direct (Datacenter edition), managed in Windows Admin Center or System Center Virtual Machine Manager. Microsoft’s Azure Local clusters, formerly Azure Stack HCI, run Hyper-V underneath. vCenter gives you one console for all of it; Hyper-V spreads the same jobs over several Microsoft tools and rewards teams that already script in PowerShell.

Licensing after Broadcom

This is now the deciding row for most buyers. As of October 2026, per Broadcom’s knowledge base:

• Perpetual VMware licences are no longer sold; vSphere is a subscription, counted per physical core with a minimum of 16 cores per CPU, even for a CPU with fewer. Order minimums have changed more than once, so get a current quote before you plan.
• vSphere 9 is available only as part of VMware vSphere Foundation and VMware Cloud Foundation. vSphere Standard and Enterprise Plus are supported up to 8 Update 3, and the discontinued Essentials Plus licences cannot run vSphere 9.
• The free ESXi hypervisor was withdrawn in 2024 and came back as ESXi 8.0 Update 3e: up to two physical CPUs, eight vCPUs per VM, no vCenter, no vMotion, HA or DRS, no backups through VMware’s backup API (VADP), and no support. Broadcom positions it for home labs and testing.

Hyper-V costs nothing extra on top of Windows Server, which is licensed per physical core as well (at least 8 cores per processor and 16 per server). Standard edition covers two Windows Server VMs per fully licensed host, Datacenter an unlimited number. That last point matters even to VMware shops: Windows Server guests need Windows Server licences whichever hypervisor runs them, so a host full of Windows VMs usually carries a Datacenter licence anyway, and the hypervisor that comes with it is already paid for. The free standalone Hyper-V Server ended with the 2019 release.

VirtualBox vs VMware Workstation on a desktop

Since 11 November 2024, Broadcom has offered Workstation Pro and Fusion Pro free for commercial, educational and personal use, with no licence key; the download needs a free Broadcom account and applies to Workstation Pro 17.5.2 and later. Releases now carry year-based names; the newest release notes on 21 October 2026 were for 26H1u1, dated 3 September 2026, and Help, About shows the version you have. VirtualBox’s platform package is open source under the GPLv3, and its download page listed 7.2.22 on the same day. Its separate Extension Pack, which adds the VirtualBox remote desktop server, host webcam passthrough, the Intel PXE boot ROM, disk image encryption and cloud integration, is under the Personal Use and Educational License, so a business that installs it needs a commercial licence from Oracle.

The last row trips up many Windows users. WSL 2, Windows Sandbox and Memory Integrity all switch the Windows hypervisor on, even if you never opened Hyper-V Manager. From then on, Workstation and VirtualBox can no longer use VT-x or AMD-V directly and run their VMs through Microsoft’s Windows Hypervisor Platform instead. That works, but VirtualBox’s own manual warns of significant slowdowns. If a VM is unexpectedly slow on Windows 11, check that first.

And client Hyper-V is a third option if you have Windows Pro: free, type 1 and fast, but with no general USB passthrough and a plainer interface. Good for Windows and Linux test servers, less so for a VM you want to plug a USB device into.

Moving a VM between them

Each family stores disks in its own format, and qemu-img converts between all of them. We converted a blank 1 GiB test disk into VHDX, VMDK and VDI with qemu-img 7.2 on Debian 12; the same command works in any direction, so swap in your own file names:

qemu-img convert -p -O vhdx -o subformat=dynamic disk.vmdk disk.vhdx          # VMware to Hyper-V
qemu-img convert -p -O vmdk -o subformat=streamOptimized disk.vhdx disk.vmdk   # Hyper-V to VMware
qemu-img convert -p -O vdi disk.vmdk disk.vdi                                   # to VirtualBox
qemu-img convert -p -O qcow2 disk.vhdx disk.qcow2                               # to KVM
qemu-img info disk.vhdx

image: disk.vhdx
file format: vhdx
virtual size: 1 GiB (1073741824 bytes)
disk size: 1.21 MiB
cluster_size: 8388608

The disk is the easy part. Before you move a VM:

• Drivers: uninstall VMware Tools or Guest Additions in the old hypervisor. For a Windows guest headed to KVM, install the VirtIO drivers first, or let virt-v2v convert the guest and inject them.
• Firmware: a guest that boots with BIOS from an MBR disk needs a Generation 1 VM in Hyper-V; Generation 2 VMs boot UEFI only.
• ESXi: import through an OVF or OVA package, or upload the VMDK and convert it on the host with vmkfstools -i, per Broadcom’s documentation.
• Network: the guest gets a new virtual network card, so a static IP address may have to be configured again.

Where KVM fits

KVM is the third type 1 hypervisor, built into the Linux kernel, free, and the base of most VPS hosting. It has no single vendor console; you manage it with libvirt and virsh, virt-manager, or a platform such as Proxmox VE, which adds clustering, live migration and backups in a web interface, and is one of the usual candidates, next to Hyper-V, when a team plans its way off VMware. KVM’s difference from container platforms is covered in KVM vs OpenVZ.

Which one should you use?

• Mostly Windows servers, and Windows Server licences anyway: Hyper-V. The hypervisor is already paid for, and the tools are the ones your team knows.
• An existing vSphere estate that depends on vCenter, vSAN or NSX: VMware, priced under the current subscriptions before renewal, not from old invoices.
• Linux-first, or leaving VMware on a budget: KVM, usually through Proxmox VE.
• A test VM on your own computer: on Windows, Workstation Pro or client Hyper-V; on a Mac, Fusion Pro or VirtualBox; on Linux, VirtualBox, Workstation Pro or KVM with virt-manager. All are free; VirtualBox wins when the same VM has to run on several desktop systems.

Hypervisors and VMHeaven

Every VMHeaven VPS, from Standard KVM to Hi-CPU KVM, is a KVM virtual machine, and a Windows VPS runs Windows Server 2022 or 2019 as a KVM guest. That covers anything that is not itself a hypervisor. To run Hyper-V the way it is meant to run, on the hardware, rent a Windows dedicated server in Amsterdam: Windows Server runs directly on the machine, and you can add the Hyper-V role yourself. The trade-offs between the two are in VPS vs dedicated server.

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