Free CrossOver Alternatives
The best free alternative to CrossOver is Wine, which is also Open Source. If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked more than 25 alternatives to CrossOver and many of them is free so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement. Other interesting free alternatives to CrossOver are Lutris, PlayOnLinux - PlayOnMac, Proton and Bottles.
CrossOver alternatives are mainly Compatibility Layer Tools but may also be Game Library Managers or Virtualization Tools. Filter by these if you want a narrower list of alternatives or looking for a specific functionality of CrossOver.
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Linux
- Android
- Android Tablet
- BSD
Wine is a free, open source application for running Windows software on operating systems that are normally not supported. With Wine, you can install and run these applications just like you would in Windows.
- Free • Open Source
- Linux
- Online
Lutris is an open source gaming platform for GNU/Linux. It allows you to gather and manage (install, configure and launch) all your games acquired from any source, in a single interface.
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Linux
- BSD
- Wine
- FreeBSD
PlayOnLinux is a graphical frontend for the Wine software compatibility layer which allows Linux and Mac users to install Windows-based video games, Microsoft Office (2000 to 2010), Microsoft Internet Explorer, as well as many other applications.
- Free • Open Source
- Linux
- Steam
Proton is a tool for use with the Steam client which allows games which are exclusive to Windows to run on Linux kernel and macOS operating systems.
Bottles is an application designed for elementary OS (but works on all GNU/Linux distributions), which helps in managing wineprefix.
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- Android
- Raspberry Pi
Pegasus is a graphical frontend for browsing your game library (especially retro games) and launching them from one place. It's focusing on customizability, cross platform support (including embedded devices) and high performance.
Parallels Desktop gives Mac users the ability to run Windows, Linux or any other operating system and their critical applications at the same time as macOS. Parallels Desktop is optimized for Intel and Apple M1 chip.
Parallels Desktop vs CrossOver opinions
CrossOver emulates windows application layer. parallels creates a fully virtualised machine and requires Windows installation, like if it was a physical computer.
This is a virtualization tool, not a compatibility layer
The Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is a new Windows 10 feature that enables you to run native Linux command-line tools directly on Windows, alongside your traditional Windows desktop and modern store apps.
WineBottler is an App to manage and wrap your Windows apps into convenient OS X apps. WineBottler helps you with running Windows programs on OS X.
Discontinued
The application has not been updated for almost three years: https://bitbucket.org/winebottler/winebottler/src/master/, https://bitbucket.org/winebottler/winebottler/src/master/It also does not support the latest versions of macOS: https://www.reddit.com/r/winehq/comments/j43ziq/comment/g7gqpk5/
WineBottler vs CrossOver opinions
It's much more complicated than Crossover. CrossOver is simple to use and WineBottler is much more complicated
