CloudStack vs OpenNebula comparison

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CloudStack

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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: February 2026).

CloudStack vs. OpenNebula

February 2026

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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

7th

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

9th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of CloudStack is 2.6%, down from 6.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenNebula is 2.9%, down from 8.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
CloudStack	2.6%
OpenNebula	2.9%
Other	94.5%

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.

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FOURES Jean-Philippe

Products Manager at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

Reliable, simple to manage, and offers great technical support

The support of VXLAN fits with our network management. Thanks to this we can propose mixed solutions using virtual resources on OpenNebula and bare metal servers hosted in our facilities linked to each other on the sale network. This use case is very useful when some applications need bare metal power (Kubernetes workers, huge databases, AI models computations, et cetera). The cluster management is very useful for splitting our different clusters (mutual vs dedicated). We can manage deployments and capacity planning without pain. The API is also really simple and it helped us to develop the Terraform provider to manage OpenNebula like any other cloud infrastructure.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"CloudStack, by default, gives us a zone-based setup which makes it easier to manage datacenters located in different geographical areas."

"CloudStack is simple to stand up and get off the ground in a hurry. Its centralized design allows for easier troubleshooting when compared to OpenStack. Out of the box, it’s very well suited for white labeling and IaaS."

"CloudStack supports every operating system that supports hypervisors, which makes the product more attractive, compared to vCloud Director or Azure."

"It works, and pretty much always has. Reliability and support for enterprise features, with a multi-tenant interface, makes CloudStack a very compelling solution."

"You can use a single API to get things done, rather than multiple APIs on multiple modules."

"Everything in CloudStack works effectively."

"I have been impressed by CloudStack's most recent updates around Kubernetes. In particular, they have worked with Kubernetes to support the Cluster API, and you can now easily integrate Kubernetes into CloudStack and get access to a lot of good features."

More CloudStack pros

"What's best about OpenNebula that people like is that it's easy to deploy. It's also easy to manage. It's interesting because people choose OpenNebula over other solutions because of the ease of management."

"The most valuable feature of OpenNebula is that it scales very well."

"OpenNebula is easy to deploy and manage compared to other solutions like OpenStack."

"For the entire data center, as a private cloud, I believe that user management, expert management, and the virtual data center is completely magic for the users."

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

"I also like the ability to build custom functions. I can define a function where I have two types of views and configure the dependencies. The virtual data centers concept allows me to define users. If a user wants to join certain kinds of machines, the host and the other user won't see them. It gives me the flexibility to define multiple views and data centers in one place."

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

"The service feature appeals most to us, thus it is the most valuable."

More OpenNebula pros

Cons

"The area of Apache CloudStack that could stand the most improvement is the functionality/features around the virtual routers. They can be somewhat cumbersome to deal with at times and are the least stable piece of the product."

"I encountered some stability issues. When I tried to remove high-capacity virtual machines it took a long time to update, and sometimes the VM status failed to update properly in the cloud database. This occurred multiple times, even though I had sufficient resources."

"The area of improvement could be the regionalization aspect. For example, managing multiple regions or HubStack deployments together was not thought out thoroughly in the versions I used. We faced issues around managing the global infrastructure and had to develop around it."

"I think that container technology in CloudStack is an area that needs to be improved."

"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."

"It is not widely used so Google does not help very much when you are troubleshooting, and the CloudStack forum is not very active."

"It would be great to have a couple of “external” networks for VPC and have the possibility, for each domain, to choose they type of “external” network."

"This product needs a lot improvement on the development side. Every new version introduces new bugs. It lacks many features needed for NFV like DPDK, SR-IOV support, etc."

More CloudStack cons

"They have been saying for the past two and a half years that they would develop a feature to hot-add RAM and CPU, but it does not work."

"They should add more features like object storage."

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

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

"An area for improvement in OpenNebula is the number of features it has. The solution doesn't have that many cloud features compared to other solutions. You'd say, "Okay, simplicity over a rich feature list?" Some say, "No, I need a big machine or a cloud interface for my customers to manage resources. I don't have to go and do it for them." Some people do it that way, and it works, but I'd like to improve the limited features in OpenNebula."

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

"There are small things that are hard. For example, making sure that it is going to be installable on public clouds."

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

More OpenNebula cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

"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."

"CloudStack is an open-source product."

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

"VRA is very expensive but OpenNebula is free."

"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."

"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."

"OpenNebula gives good value for money."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

University

10%

Comms Service Provider

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.

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...

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...

What needs improvement with OpenNebula?

The web interface could be better. It's not very difficult to use, but there's room for enhancement. Another area for improvement is the integration with hardware to manage the lower layer of the n...

What is your primary use case for OpenNebula?

Previously, we were using VMware, but recently, we've started using OpenNebula for cloud management. As a big cloud provider, it helps give customers increased control over their clusters. We use L...

What advice do you have for others considering OpenNebula?

I recommend it, especially if you need a management interface for a small to medium private cloud. I would rate OpenNebula an eight out of ten.

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Product Reports

Download CloudStack product report

CloudStack

February 2026

Download OpenNebula product report

January 2026

Also Known As

Vmops, Cloud.com

No data available

Overview

Apache CloudStack is open source software designed to deploy and manage large networks of virtual machines, as a highly available, highly scalable Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud computing platform.

Apache

OpenNebula provides the most simple but feature-rich and flexible solution for the comprehensive management of virtualized data centers to enable private, public and hybrid IaaS clouds. OpenNebula interoperability makes cloud an evolution by leveraging existing IT assets, protecting your investments, and avoiding vendor lock-in.

OpenNebula is a turnkey enterprise-ready solution that includes all the features needed to provide an on-premises (private) cloud offering, and to offer public cloud services.

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.