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Oracle VM VirtualBox vs RHEV comparison

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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
12th
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 September 2026, in the Server Virtualization Software category, the mindshare of Oracle VM VirtualBox is 7.3%, up from 6.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of RHEV is 2.4%, down from 3.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Virtualization Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Oracle VM VirtualBox7.3%
RHEV2.4%
Other90.3%
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 cloning feature is a very useful tool."
"I like that it has a snapshot feature."
"My primary use of the solution is for testing distributions and installations."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to copy bidirectionally between the desktop and the virtual machine."
"In my opinion, this product is the best available option for testing virtual appliances and operating systems."
"The fact that it is free is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"It's Oracle, so there you go; you have a VirtualBox, it's well-known, it's stable, I use it, and if it works for me, it might as well work for you."
"Our Return on Investment has been excellent."
"Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization can help to optimize their space utilization and optimize their costs."
"It's a very good platform to build your virtual machines on and highly integrated with Red Hat itself and its satellites."
"Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor has robust virtualization management features with proven enterprise security and performance."
"It's a scalable solution."
"It is easy to deal with when comes to application migration and its compatibility with the multiple component applications."
"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
"Red Hat is the most stable system; it's better than other OS solutions."
"When you purchase RHEV, you are essentially buying a subscription license. This license can be integrated with various client types, including these integrations with the subscription."
 

Cons

"It would be great to have a hypervisor version of VirtualBox running on servers."
"Sometimes a VM doesn't start normally and I have to reinstall the product."
"The AI and the UI could be improved. The user interface is a little outdated and the AI is not very attractive."
"Oracle VM VirtualBox is not flexible, It's not like VMware."
"They could improve the graphics functionality of the product."
"When I select the Ubuntu operating system from within the virtual machine, it sometimes hangs."
"Having live migrations to move a running server to other hardware would be great."
"The memory and hardware usage could be a little bit lighter. Right now, it's quite heavy on the usage. The CPU usage should be lower."
"While everything needs improvement in some way, I have no specifics."
"It would be better to have more patches, especially kernel-level updates, live and online so that we can keep the business up and running during this period."
"Load balancing not very efficient and fails to utilize and distribute network resources."
"RHEV is not improving because it has been discontinued. It has been discontinued for years."
"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 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."
"We have found the technical support for this solution to be very slow in responding to our requests for assistance."
"The availability of technical expertise with the solution may be limited in some areas."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is pretty good for the price, which is free."
"It is a very cost-effective solution."
"Price wise, Oracle VM VirtualBox is a six on a scale from one to ten."
"The license I use is free."
"Everything is free within limitations. Once you go over a certain level of usage you have to license the product."
"There are no licensing fees."
"Pricing does not apply for us, we do not have to pay for the service."
"No licensing is required as it is open-source."
"This is an open-source solution."
"Price-wise, RHEV is okay, in my opinion."
"RHEV offers pricing based on a per-physical-machine licensing model."
"We are using the free version of Red Hat."
"The price of RHEV is high. It is an open-source solution, the price should be less. The price should not be on par with a solution, such as VMware. It's not more or equal to VMware, it's less, but the difference should be more substantial."
"Its price depends on the use cases."
"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."
"I would say the price is acceptable."
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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
14%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
8%
 

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: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.