We performed a comparison between KVM and Oracle VM VirtualBox based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Both KVM and Oracle VM VirtualBox have their strengths and weaknesses. Oracle VM VirtualBox seems to be the more favorable choice of the two, since it offers good scalability whereas scalability seems to be an ongoing issue for KVM users.
"If you prefer command-line, there are all kinds of command-line options."
"KVM is stable."
"Very cost-effective."
"Good screen and keyboard sharing feature."
"The GUI interface makes the management of KVM easier than ever before."
"It is easy to use, stable, and flexible. It is a pretty mature product, and it is faster than VirtualBox."
"I like that it's easy to manage. It's also more powerful when it comes to security than others. That point of view is the one consideration. The other consideration is that it's cost-effective."
"I have found KVM to be scalable."
"The solution is very convenient and easy to use."
"Oracle VM Virtualbox is easy to use and does not require much training."
"The snapshot feature is very powerful; it protects us from disaster."
"The solution has high performance and is easy to use."
"The installation is easy."
"Oracle VM VirtualBox is easy to use."
"The pause feature is valuable. I can pause, which is something that not all hypervisors allow. The snapshot feature is also valuable."
"It's very simple to use."
"One thing that maybe could be improved is making it easier to scale. It needs to be more clear on how to scale the storage space for virtual machines."
"I have previously used VMware and KVM is easier to use. However, they both have their strengths depending on their use cases. They are mostly equal. One of VMware's advantages is it has better support."
"Lacks high availability across clusters as well as support for Apache CloudStack."
"Technical support could be better. In the next release, I would like to see an improved user interface and dashboard. This type of improvement will make it easy or help our engineers understand the solution from a requirement point of view."
"Monitoring and resolution could be improved."
"Business continuity features need to be added."
"Its resource usage can be improved."
"There are some issues with the graphics and some software that is very complex."
"The user interface needs to be improved."
"The AI and the UI could be improved. The user interface is a little outdated and the AI is not very attractive."
"Having live migrations to move a running server to other hardware would be great."
"Basically, the GUI and command-line interface need improvement."
"It would be good if we could use Hyper-V Windows subsystems with Linux and VirtualBox on the same instance. Currently, to be able to use VirtualBox, we have to restart the machine into an instance of Windows where Hyper-V is disabled, which is understandably very inconvenient."
"When I select the Ubuntu operating system from within the virtual machine, it sometimes hangs."
"The installation is difficult and could be improved."
"Oracle VM VirtualBox is not flexible, It's not like VMware."
KVM is ranked 4th in Server Virtualization Software with 9 reviews while Oracle VM VirtualBox is ranked 5th in Server Virtualization Software with 14 reviews. KVM is rated 7.4, while Oracle VM VirtualBox is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of KVM writes "Stable, easy to set up, and very easy to use". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Oracle VM VirtualBox writes "A free and versatile open-source solution that supports multiple platforms and is easy to set up". KVM is most compared with Proxmox VE, Hyper-V, VMware vSphere, Oracle VM and VMware Workstation, whereas Oracle VM VirtualBox is most compared with Proxmox VE, Hyper-V, VMware vSphere, Oracle VM and VMware Workstation. See our KVM vs. Oracle VM VirtualBox report.
See our list of best Server Virtualization Software vendors.
We monitor all Server Virtualization Software reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.