The best Virtualization alternative to Proxmox Virtual Environment is VirtualBox, which is both free and Open Source. If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked more than 25 alternatives to Proxmox Virtual Environment and many of them are Virtualization Tools so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement. Other interesting Virtualization Tool alternatives to Proxmox Virtual Environment are XCP-ng, VMware vSphere Hypervisor, SmartOS and VMmanager.
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.
Server based hypervisor and desktop hypervisor are not the same
It is a Type 2 Hypervisor, not Type 1.
XCP-ng is a high-performance, enterprise-level hypervisor with a rich ecosystem and is the result of massive cooperation between individuals and companies. All commercial features are enabled with no commitment required to a support agreement.
Works like Citrix hypervisor, and could be managed for free by XCP console for many platforms and you may adopt Xen Orchestra for automation and WEB management (freemium also). Both products came from same company so it works seamlessly.
VMware vSphere Hypervisor ( based on ESXi ) is a free bare-metal hypervisor that virtualizes servers so you can consolidate your applications on less hardware.
SmartOS is a hypervisor lean enough to run entirely in memory, powerful enough to run as much as you want to throw at it. Provisioning is blindingly fast, thanks to zones and ZFS file system creation.
Linux-based web control panel for automated KVM virtual machine management, cloud and VPS deployment, modern user interface, load monitoring every 15 minutes, weekly security updates, billing integrations, flexible pricing, and feature-unlimited free trial for 30 days.
The open version is heavily crippled compared to proxmox's open feature set
Microsoft Hyper-V Server is a free product that delivers enterprise-class virtualization for your datacenter and hybrid cloud.
oVirt is a virtualization management application. That means that you can use the oVirt management interface ( the oVirt engine) to manage hardware nodes, storage and network resources, and to deploy and monitor virtual machines running in your data center.
Fully featured, actively developed, good high availability featureset
(formerly XenServer) Citrix Hypervisor is a leading virtualization management platform optimized for application, desktop and server virtualization infrastructures.
Harvester is the next generation of open-source hyperconverged infrastructure solutions designed for modern cloud-native environments.
Lima launches Linux virtual machines on macOS, with automatic file sharing, port forwarding, and containerd.
Incus is a modern, secure and powerful system container and virtual machine manager.
Paperspace wraps powerful technology in a simple interface that anyone can understand. Get a new computer in less than 5 minutes, zero configuration required
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Use cases have practically no overlap. Proxmox requires dedicated server hardware and is of no use to casual users with desktops, whereas VirtualBox is controlled manually with a GUI and would be highly inconvenient and inefficient for the kind of infrastructure Proxmox is designed for