Parallels Desktop Alternatives for Mac
There are many alternatives to Parallels Desktop for Mac if you are looking for a replacement. The best Mac alternative is VirtualBox, which is both free and Open Source. If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked more than 25 alternatives to Parallels Desktop and 17 are available for Mac so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement. Other interesting Mac alternatives to Parallels Desktop are Wine, QEMU, CrossOver and VMware Fusion.
Parallels Desktop alternatives are mainly Virtualization Tools but may also be Compatibility Layer Tools. Filter by these if you want a narrower list of alternatives or looking for a specific functionality of Parallels Desktop.
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- BSD
- Solaris
VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use.
VirtualBox vs Parallels Desktop opinions
rivolta8959I like it because it's FOSS, however, it's really glitchy. It has a lot of display issues with my guest OSs (screen flickering, black screen).
JohnFastmanUnlike Parallels, Virtualbox is free, open source and runs natively on Windows, Mac and Linux. What's not to like?
ChristianFerrettifree, lighter, even if less simple to use
- 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
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- BSD
QEMU (short for "Quick EMUlator") is a free and open-source hosted hypervisor that performs hardware virtualization.
CrossOver allows you to install many popular Windows applications and games on your Intel OS X Mac or Linux computer.
Seamlessly run your favorite Windows applications and devices, on any Intel-based Mac.
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.
Wineskin is a tool used to make ports of Windows software to Mac OS X. The ports are in the form of normal Mac application bundle wrappers. It works like a wrapper around the Windows software, and you can share just the wrappers if you choose.
Discontinued
Hasn't been updated in over 6 years and doesn't work on most modern versions of macOS: https://sourceforge.net/projects/wineskin/, https://github.com/Gcenx/WineskinServer#wineskin
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.
No screenshots yet
Run Linux programs on macOS, a different Linux distro, or a different architecture.
No screenshots yet
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.
