There are many alternatives to Parallels Desktop for Mac if you are looking for a replacement. The best free Mac alternative is VirtualBox, which is also Open Source. If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked more than 50 alternatives to Parallels Desktop and 17 are free and available for Mac so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement. Other interesting free Mac alternatives to Parallels Desktop are Wine, QEMU, UTM and VMware Fusion.
Open source VirtualBox offers powerful x86/AMD64 virtualization available freely under GNU GPL v2. Runs on Windows, Linux, Mac, Solaris hosts. Supports a vast array of guest OS like Windows, Linux, Solaris. Portable, lightweight, ad-free, with dark mode.
An advanced, free open-source tool enabling Windows applications to run on Linux and other systems without emulation. It offers configuration options, supports diverse operating systems, and benefits from continuous updates and robust community support to enhance Windows app compatibility.
QEMU, an open-source hypervisor, performs hardware virtualization, emulates CPUs using dynamic binary translation, and supports various architectures. It runs diverse unmodified guest OS, provides device models, and offers mixed translation modes for efficient execution.
UTM is a full featured system emulator and virtual machine host for iOS and macOS. It is based off of QEMU. In short, it allows you to run Windows, Linux, and more on your Mac, iPhone, and iPad.
Seamlessly run your favorite Windows applications and devices, on any Intel-based Mac. Built from the ground up for the Mac, VMware Fusion is the easiest way to switch to Mac—letting you bring all of your Windows applications with you, making the most of your Windows software...
Multipass is a lightweight VM manager for Linux, Windows and macOS. It's designed for developers who want a fresh Ubuntu environment with a single command. It uses KVM on Linux, Hyper-V on Windows and HyperKit on macOS to run the VM with minimal overhead.
VirtualBuddy can virtualize macOS 12 and later on Apple Silicon, with the goal of offering features that are useful to developers who need to test their apps on multiple versions of macOS, especially betas.
Lima launches Linux virtual machines on macOS, with automatic file sharing, port forwarding, and containerd.
A lightweight CLI and local API server to create, run and manage macOS and Linux virtual machines (VMs) natively on Apple Silicon.
Using Wineskin technology, Porting Kit is a PaulTheTall.com app that can install games and apps compiled for Microsoft Windows® in Mac OS X. It has access to a server where we store WSI files for more than 300 games, which can be installed by any Porting Kit user.
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Unlike Parallels, Virtualbox is free, open source and runs natively on Windows, Mac and Linux. What's not to like?