CloudStack vs OpenNebula comparison

Why PeerSpot?

Apache and OpenNebula are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. Apache is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.2, while OpenNebula is ranked #26 with an average rating of 7.0. Apache holds a 2.2% mindshare in CM, compared to OpenNebula’s 1.5% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Apache users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of OpenNebula users who would recommend it.

CloudStack

Read 34 CloudStack reviews

4,171 Views
4,004 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

OpenNebula

Read 15 OpenNebula reviews

3,630 Views
3,376 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

CloudStack

OpenNebula

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

CloudStack and OpenNebula are competing in the cloud infrastructure domain. OpenNebula has the upper hand due to its adaptability and ease of deployment across varied infrastructures.

Features: CloudStack offers comprehensive support for hybrid and multi-cloud environments, advanced networking, and security features, and a centralized management system for scalability. OpenNebula has a lightweight footprint, provides a user-friendly interface, and supports flexibility across both private and public cloud platforms.

Room for Improvement: CloudStack can improve by streamlining its resource-intensive deployment process, simplifying the customization process, and enhancing its support for newer virtualization technologies. OpenNebula could benefit from expanding advanced networking capabilities, increasing support for multi-cloud environments, and improving its integration with additional enterprise applications.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: OpenNebula is known for its straightforward deployment and strong customer support, making it easy to manage various cloud infrastructures. CloudStack's deployment may require more resources, but it provides extensive documentation and community support for users.

Pricing and ROI: CloudStack is an open-source solution, potentially involving higher initial expenses due to substantial customization and resource needs. OpenNebula, also open-source, presents lower setup costs and an attractive return on investment for small to medium-sized enterprises.

To learn more, read our detailed CloudStack vs. OpenNebula Report (Updated: September 2026).

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack vs. OpenNebula

September 2026

Download the complete report

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

CloudStack

Ranking in Cloud Management

8th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

OpenNebula

Ranking in Cloud Management

26th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of CloudStack is 2.2%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenNebula is 1.5%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
CloudStack	2.2%
OpenNebula	1.5%
Other	96.3%

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

Tharun Kumar Reddy Thamatam

Senior Infrastructure Consultant at Infosys

Achieving seamless infrastructure management with optimized network and user access controls

I believe enhancements could be made in CloudStack, particularly in the management servers. I had the opportunity to collaborate with one of the Apache CloudStack developers, leading to the installation of additional agents for better information retrieval from hypervisors. We implemented configurations, ensuring consistency across hosts and VMs. We also utilized Ansible or YAML files to automate password upgrades during patching activities and database management, showcasing our customization efforts for improvement. For future releases, it would be beneficial if Apache enhanced CloudStack by integrating alerting systems directly. We've had instances where hypervisors experienced overloads without prior alerts, so proactive alerts within the tool would better prepare us for addressing issues swiftly, preventing disruption in business operations. A portal summarizing system metrics alongside alert capabilities would greatly enhance our operational efficiency.

Read full review

Andy Brauer

CTO at Encha

A highly scalable solution that gives good value for money, but it does not have payment gateways

OpenNebula's templates are weak, and it could do something to make template creation a lot easier to use. The solution has a template for every single VM you create, which is not clever. You should be able to use a template for many different virtual machines. There are no payment gateways in OpenNebula.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Everything in CloudStack works effectively."

"Over the years, we have valued CloudStack for its stability."

"When compared to OpenStack, CloudStack is also an open-source platform that is continuously improving its features and capabilities with each new version release. Having worked with CloudStack 4.7, 4.14, and most recently, 4.17, I have noticed significant enhancements in the platform's features and customer experience, such as the introduction of a new user interface in the latest release. Notably, the latest versions have made major improvements to VM live migrations, making them more efficient and effective."

"We acquired some good clients for our billing and control portal solutions with CloudStack and it improved our business greatly."

"CloudStack is our private IaaS cloud which helps us manage resource usage in our company and it is also a great PoC environment."

"It was easy to deploy, both for PoC and production (with HA)."

"The APIs for automation in CloudStack are excellent; everything is API-driven, and while the API is very rich and hard to learn, you can do everything you would want to do, including everything in the user interface and more."

"CloudStack provides an easy way to have high availability (HA) of the virtual machines and helps with a better SLA."

More CloudStack pros

"OpenNebula is lightweight, stable, and easy to customize."

"For our use case, we found the solution to be the best fit when dealing with infrastructure services."

"I'll definitely recommend OpenNebula because it's an open-source solution that's effortless to set up, and the total cost of ownership is low."

"It's easy to integrate OpenNebula with our IT systems."

"The live migration feature has been great and is something we use very often."

"It makes maintenance very easy and stress-free for our teams."

"OpenNebula freed my customer from doing the maintenance operations of the servers because now that can be done by his clients."

"It is quite easy to deploy."

More OpenNebula pros

Cons

"The installation of CloudStack can be quite challenging because you need a good understanding of the product before starting."

"It's really hard to delete zones, clusters, datacenters. You need to follow strict rules, which were not properly documented at the time."

"I would like to see support for native VLAN, and fault-tolerance."

"CS has very descriptive logging, and every time I faced issues and asked for help, I didn’t get any reply from the community. Reason? Its quite obvious. CS runs on specific environments, unique to each case. So, unless it is a functional issue of CS, nobody can help you. All issues were resolved by myself going through logs. This is another reason why you need smart enough people to manage it. Engineers must have knowledge of hypervisors and understand how CS interacts with them."

"After Citrix divested CloudPlatform to Accelerite, commercial support was absolutely atrocious."

"The product could improve by embracing newer technologies like GPU virtualization."

"I have encountered some challenges during the initial setup or deployment of CloudStack."

"The user can't upload SSH keys from the UI. We have to use the API for this, and it is not always convenient."

More CloudStack cons

"As with all enterprise software licensing, the pricing is not intuitive and must be negotiated; grandfathered contracts are better than anything offered today."

"The storage feature that they have is a bit confusing."

"The UI, monitoring, and alerting could benefit from further improvements."

"Hosting platforms are limited so the deployment process needs improvement."

"Backup features are only available in the enterprise edition. The community version lacks a good solution for making backups."

"There are no payment gateways in OpenNebula."

"The web interface could be better. It's not very difficult to use, but there's room for enhancement."

"It should have a simple REST API like most other tools. It's the industry standard format. An XML-RPC API gives you an XML document that you have to convert and then do something with that. REST API endpoint provides outputs in a JSON document. I would also like to see support for user data or heat templates, which OpenStack offers, but OpenNebula doesn't have this yet."

More OpenNebula cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is a 100% open-source solution needing just an Apache license. Also, there are no hidden fees to be paid."

"The Apache CloudStack is open source, so you do not have licenses to purchase."

"The solution is open-source and free."

"CloudStack is an open source solution, so you don't need to pay anything for it. When our company develops something specially for CloudStack, it is donated to the Apache Software Foundation and provided to anyone that wants to use it."

"CloudStack is an open-source product."

"Give an effort to planning. If possible, contract a specialized consultant company for the initial setup and knowledge transfer."

"As far as I know, CS is still free of charge. If you want to pay some money, Citrix Cloud Platform is based on CS, I think. As for hypervisors – everything as usual, you need to pay for VMware and vCenter. As for XenServer, recently they changed the free feature list, so you may need to pay some money to get useful features like XenMotion."

"There is no license, so the product is free unless you are buying professional technical support services."

"The solution is open source so is free."

"OpenNebuoa has recently come up with a new subscription model that is economical and a lot of new customers are choosing this as it is an easy subscription model."

"We use the Community Edition, rather than the Enterprise Edition."

"The licensing for OpenNebula used to be free, but now it's no longer free. A customer contacted me asking to move to another provider because of the changes in the licensing terms for OpenNebula. I have no information on how much the OpenNebula license is because the customer pays for it, and I only do the integration."

"VRA is very expensive but OpenNebula is free."

"OpenNebula gives good value for money."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Outsourcing Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

12%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	13
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	12

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	3

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CloudStack?

CloudStack is open-source, so there is no cost apart from learning. Billing solutions, if outsourced, come at a moderate cost.

See all answers

What needs improvement with CloudStack?

Enhancements for CloudStack can focus on integrating more hypervisors, as mentioned regarding current features. We're working on a new feature that will allow for certain limited functions, but ove...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for CloudStack?

My usual use cases for CloudStack involve an AWS style private cloud or public cloud. I can deploy an AWS style cloud using the open source tool that is CloudStack. The use case depends on the cust...

See all answers

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Comparisons

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Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 5% of the time

Persistent Intelligent Cloud (PiCloud) vs CloudStack

Compared 5% of the time

CloudCheckr vs CloudStack

Compared 4% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs OpenNebula

Compared 5% of the time

BMC Helix Cloud Security vs OpenNebula

Compared 5% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs OpenNebula

Compared 4% of the time

Cisco UCS Director vs OpenNebula

Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack

October 2026

Download CloudStack product report

Buyer's Guide

OpenNebula

October 2026

Download OpenNebula product report

Also Known As

Vmops, Cloud.com

No data available

Overview

CloudStack offers an easy-to-manage platform compatible with multiple hypervisors, enabling seamless networking and efficient workload scaling. Its advanced APIs and open-source nature facilitate automation and customization, making it ideal for extensive cloud environments.

CloudStack is recognized for ease of setup, robust networking, and hypervisor compatibility. Supporting a range of workloads, it scales efficiently, offering flexible features like VM migration, private networking, and multi-zone support. Its user-friendly open-source design aids troubleshooting and customization, making it ideal for managing broad cloud deployments. Despite needing upgrades in interface and integration with third-party vendors and container technology, CloudStack remains a strong choice for businesses seeking effective virtualization solutions. Improvements in documentation, regional management, and emerging tech support would enhance usability and performance.

What are CloudStack's notable features?

Hypervisor compatibility: Supports diverse virtualization technologies for flexible deployment.
Robust networking: Ensures reliable and scalable network infrastructure management across zones.
Advanced APIs: Facilitates automation and integration to streamline cloud operations.
VM migration: Enhances operational flexibility with seamless virtual machine relocations.
Private networking: Provides secure and isolated network environments for critical tasks.
Multi-zone support: Offers scalable solutions for distributed cloud management.

What benefits and ROI should users consider?

Open-source model: Allows extensive customization without licensing costs, enhancing ROI.
Ease of management: Simplifies operations, reducing time and resources spent on maintenance.
Scalability: Enables growth and adaptability, fostering agility in expanding businesses.
Flexibility: Supports various workloads and environments, meeting diverse operational needs.

CloudStack is implemented across industries, used in managing virtual environments, offering IaaS in public, private, and hybrid cloud models. Companies use it for internal virtualization and customer service, integrating with hypervisors across data centers to orchestrate virtual machines and support development and testing globally.

Apache

OpenNebula offers scalability, ease of deployment, and integration capabilities that enhance cloud management for enterprises. It supports both virtual and bare metal resources, providing a versatile cloud management experience.

OpenNebula provides a robust platform for building, managing, and automating private and public clouds. Its compatibility with platforms like VMware, KVM, and containers makes it ideal for businesses hosting virtual private clouds and deploying Kubernetes clusters. OpenNebula's API and SDK facilitate automation and integration, allowing organizations to connect with IT systems effectively. Despite its strengths, improvements in object storage, REST API integration, and UI enhancements are needed. The documentation can be disorganized, and users encounter challenges with upgrades and community support.

What are key OpenNebula features?

Scalability: Easily manage resources for growing cloud environments.
User-Friendly Interface: Simplifies cloud management tasks.
Integration: Connects seamlessly with IT systems using robust API and SDK.
Hypervisor Support: Works with multiple hypervisors and container platforms.

What benefits do users find in OpenNebula?

Efficiency: Streamlines cloud operations, reducing management complexities.
Versatility: Offers support for both virtual and bare metal resources.
Community and Documentation: Though needing improvement, provides valuable resources for users.
Cost-Effectiveness: Lightweight nature minimizes resource expenditure.

OpenNebula implementation spans industries where cloud automation and management are critical. Companies utilize OpenNebula for deploying private clouds and managing infrastructure. Its support for Kubernetes clusters is beneficial in tech-driven sectors, highlighting OpenNebula's adaptability to different operational needs.

OpenNebula

Sample Customers

GreenQloud, Exoscale, TomTom, ASG, PC Extreme, ISWest, Grid'5000

Akamai, BBC, Fermilab, Terradue, Surf Sara, Produban, Netways, ESA, China Mobile, BlackBerry, Deloitte, Fuze, Telefonica, Trivago, Nokia, Encore Tech, Beeks.

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack vs. OpenNebula

September 2026

Free Report: CloudStack vs. OpenNebula

Find out what your peers are saying about CloudStack vs. OpenNebula and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.

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