No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Oracle VM VirtualBox vs RHEV comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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

Oracle VM VirtualBox
Ranking in Server Virtualization Software
12th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
65
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
RHEV
Ranking in Server Virtualization Software
13th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Server Virtualization Software category, the mindshare of Oracle VM VirtualBox is 6.6%, up from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of RHEV is 2.3%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Virtualization Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Oracle VM VirtualBox6.6%
RHEV2.3%
Other91.1%
Server Virtualization Software
 

Featured Reviews

Tanvir Siddique - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Officer at ADN Telecom
Easily accesses open solutions with seamless compatibility for testing and development
The most valuable feature is the seamlessness. When I install a Linux operating system, I can use Windows applications through Oracle VM VirtualBox seamlessly. There are many applications that work only on Windows. For desktop testing purposes, I used Oracle VM VirtualBox, and it works fine. The guest OS compatibility was tremendous because I used Oracle VM VirtualBox on Linux and ran Windows applications on top of that, working seamlessly.
Mike Neuliep - PeerSpot reviewer
Linux Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Has supported virtualization projects in side jobs but has required workarounds due to lack of maintenance
In my opinion, the best features of RHEV are that it is a real hypervisor and it is free, so it performs better than VMware. I have used the live migration feature in the past with RHEV. There is a free clone of it that is based on the open source. Live migration is a nifty feature if your app is not highly available and you need to do maintenance on a machine. You can migrate the VM off of it, do your maintenance, and move it back when you are done. RHEV has a high availability architecture with a built-in monitoring feature where you could see machines other than the one you are operating on. I tend to implement high availability not so much in RHEV, but by using standard application high availability strategies. Red Hat has another product specifically for high availability.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The configuration and installation is pretty straightforward."
"I like that it has a snapshot feature."
"The scalability of the solution is very good."
"We had other costumers that had used other solutions, such as VMware and Microsoft hypervisor, but I've pushed them all over to VirtualBox because of its flexibility and potential."
"VirtualBox provides an isolated, consistent environment I can use to experiment with software configurations or create developer sandboxes without affecting the consistency of my own work environment."
"The solution has high performance and is easy to use."
"Our Return on Investment has been excellent."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to copy bidirectionally between the desktop and the virtual machine."
"The most valuable feature of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization is its pricing."
"If you have a heterogenous data centre that is specially focused on Linux platforms, this is safe money, and good if you are looking for automation."
"The solution is stable."
"When any organization needs end-to-end infrastructure deployment, configuration management, and automation, then RHEV is the best fit."
"They are so advanced today and so mature in what they do that they could easily give any top-notch industry leaders a run for their money."
"The solution is a great all-round product, and the virtualization is especially good."
"Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor has robust virtualization management features with proven enterprise security and performance."
"It is very stable."
 

Cons

"Sometimes a VM doesn't start normally and I have to reinstall the product."
"It's excellent for the speed of setup, to install/deploy/test things, but for serious work I prefer to work on Proxmox."
"It has some issues when you have some weird device drivers. For instance, when you have a weird sound driver working on your machine, and the VirtualBox needs to output the sound of the virtual machine into the sound driver of the physical machine, the bare metal, it doesn't work too well."
"I would recommend the solution for licensing purposes if you are using an Oracle database. Otherwise, I would recommend clients to consider different platforms."
"The installation is difficult and could be improved."
"It's not as robust as server platforms, nor does it need to be."
"Basically, the GUI and command-line interface need improvement."
"It should have the functionality where if I move the mouse away from one screen, the context changes automatically."
"Configuring the network interfaces is much better in Ubuntu and should be improved."
"Red Hat by itself is not scalable. But you can have third party add-ons like Ceph to make it massively scalable."
"If you wanted to go to the desktop computer side of things, it lags behind in that you need to go to something like Fedora to get all the extra bells and whistles."
"The initial setup is not simple or straightforward. It's very complex."
"In comparison to VMware, this solution isn't as stable. We're testing it right now, and we're not trusting the stability of the product."
"The solution has a very small lifecycle."
"We should improve how we manage storage domains and make more comprehensive control available through the command line."
"With RHEV, the cyberattacks should be fewer. I want RHEV to be better protected."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The license I use is free."
"The solution is free."
"Available for free use"
"It is an open-source solution."
"Pricing does not apply for us, we do not have to pay for the service."
"Everything is free within limitations. Once you go over a certain level of usage you have to license the product."
"It is pretty good for the price, which is free."
"No licensing is required as it is open-source."
"We are using the free version of Red Hat."
"Price-wise, RHEV is okay, in my opinion."
"I would say the price is acceptable."
"RHEV offers pricing based on a per-physical-machine licensing model."
"It's a budget product as far as I'm concerned. It's way cheaper than any of its competitors. The only thing cheaper than Red Hat is that the people who take the Red Hat code clone it and then self-support it."
"We buy a license for commercial use, and we also use the free editions."
"Its price depends on the use cases."
"We have to pay extra for vulnerability and fault tolerance."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Server Virtualization Software solutions are best for your needs.
906,960 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

VL
CIO at Robusta Technology & Training
Jan 13, 2015
vSphere vs. RHEV vs. Hyper-V vs. XenServer
We have used the following functions: 1. Hypervisor: to ensure that the virtual server provide web and email services to the company, thus providing a stable operation a with single sign-on integration of an AD server and vCenter. 2. Network and Storage: centralized data server…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
14%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise17
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise12
 

Questions from the Community

How does KVM compare to Oracle VM VirtualBox?
KVM is easy to use, stable and flexible. It is mature and very fast. It is an affordable open-source solution that is easy to set up and manage. It offers very good security. It has a virtual manag...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle VM VirtualBox?
Maintenance is not necessary because I did not use it for heavy loads.
What needs improvement with Oracle VM VirtualBox?
If there were more API access so that I could run it headlessly, similar to Proxmox where I can use API, it would be useful. Having some kind of API to maintain Oracle VM VirtualBox would be benefi...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for RHEV?
It's the open source. There's not much cost. It's very minimal comparably. Compared to what I am paying for VMware, it's negligible.
What needs improvement with RHEV?
RHEV is not improving because it has been discontinued. It has been discontinued for years. I would love to get back into RHEV, but the job market is difficult and no one is hiring. RHEV is designe...
What is your primary use case for RHEV?
I have done some consulting where I used RHEV, taking on side jobs to run virtual machines in the financial industry for a startup. The last time I used RHEV was in my home lab, but that has been d...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Airbus, Colorado State University, SCS Africa, Wolf Medical Systems.
Qualcomm and Bonham's Auction House.
Find out what your peers are saying about Oracle VM VirtualBox vs. RHEV and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
906,960 professionals have used our research since 2012.