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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
11th
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 August 2026, in the Server Virtualization Software category, the mindshare of Oracle VM VirtualBox is 6.9%, up from 6.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of RHEV is 2.4%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Virtualization Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Oracle VM VirtualBox6.9%
RHEV2.4%
Other90.7%
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."
"The fact that it is free is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"The initial setup was straightforward."
"The flexibility as well as performance wise and as well as data volume, we have huge volume stored."
"VirtualBox can import and export virtual machines in a usable format, it’s very easy to change settings to fine tune the VM, and I can send a VM to a friend to test so they don’t have to install it or port it to my other computers."
"The product is very easy to use."
"This product is extremely easy to install, use, has a great GUI and is incredibly stable."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its stability."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the support portal."
"When any organization needs end-to-end infrastructure deployment, configuration management, and automation, then RHEV is the best fit."
"Whenever there's an issue or problem, I contact customer support and they take it seriously."
"It is very stable."
"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 platform is scalable, allowing for the installation of multiple nodes."
"The solution is stable."
"I advise keeping an open mind. It's an excellent solution."
 

Cons

"One valuable feature would be for it to work right the first time but it doesn't necessarily do that."
"The product lacks scalability since it is for desktops and not for servers."
"If the user faces a problem he has to read a large amount of docs to fix them."
"It would be great to have a hypervisor version of VirtualBox running on servers."
"Due to memory overhead, I would not suggest creating more than 6 VM instances per one physical platform."
"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. If you tweak lots of drivers and play around with the different kinds of drivers and machines, you will probably break something. I have not played with it too much and maybe it already supports it, but it would probably be good to have the ability to use a container from the virtual machine environment instead of spinning off a complete virtual machine. There are other tools for that. On Linux, you have a DXE, LXC framework, and you have Docker as well. Docker is good because it is multi-platform, and you can run Docker on pretty much anything, even different processors, but it would be good if we had a VirtualBox running on it while spinning off containers instead of full virtual machines. The other thing that will become important, and I'm pretty sure that they are thinking about it as well is that there's this new hardware platform that Apple is releasing, which is an ARM-based new chip. So, VirtualBox will probably have to work on ARM-based CPUs as well."
"It could improve slightly with enhanced reporting capabilities that show the current status of the network."
"When I select the Ubuntu operating system from within the virtual machine, it sometimes hangs."
"Configuring the network interfaces is much better in Ubuntu and should be improved."
"We hope that Red Hat can produce a paradigm edition. We are looking for paradigm computing and paradigm storage. Its scalability can be improved. It is not easy to scale, and we hope that Red Hat can provide a more scalable system. They should also provide local service and support. Our customers are looking for a good software vendor to provide professional services."
"I found it a bit more difficult to manage than version seven, which was much easier."
"You need to buy support from red hat and you need to renew support every year in order to keep getting support from red hat."
"We have found the technical support for this solution to be very slow in responding to our requests for assistance."
"While everything needs improvement in some way, I have no specifics."
"The solution could improve its pricing."
"The availability of technical expertise with the solution may be limited in some areas."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Price wise, Oracle VM VirtualBox is a six on a scale from one to ten."
"It is pretty good for the price, which is free."
"No licensing is required as it is open-source."
"There are no licensing fees."
"It is an open-source solution."
"Oracle should consider reducing the cost of the product."
"Everything is free within limitations. Once you go over a certain level of usage you have to license the product."
"It is a very cost-effective solution."
"The solution does not require licencing but a subscription is necessary, which is very affordable."
"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 are using the free version of Red Hat."
"Its price depends on the use cases."
"We have to pay extra for vulnerability and fault tolerance."
"We buy a license for commercial use, and we also use the free editions."
"This product has a variety of licensing options available. However, the level of licensing, and therefore the cost of licensing, is dependent on the number of servers being utilized."
"I believe we pay on a yearly basis."
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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
15%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
Computer Software Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction 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: August 2026.
909,948 professionals have used our research since 2012.