Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Oracle VM vs VMware Workstation comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
84
Ranking in other categories
Server Virtualization Software (6th)
VMware Workstation
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Virtualization solutions, they serve different purposes. Oracle VM is designed for Server Virtualization Software and holds a mindshare of 7.3%, up 6.5% compared to last year.
VMware Workstation, on the other hand, focuses on Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), holds 15.4% mindshare, up 15.3% since last year.
Server Virtualization Software
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
 

Featured Reviews

Nitin Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Experience enhanced performance and support with reliable server consolidation
We are working with Oracle VM and Oracle OLVM We have used both Oracle VM and Oracle OLVM. It has been four or five years since we started using these solutions. Both products are from Oracle. Oracle VM provides automation capabilities in the new version. We have been using this solution for…
Shambhu Narayan  Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
An easy-to-manage solution that has really good customer support compared to other market players
VMware Workstation makes it easy to manage all the resources that we are handling. VMware Workstation has reduced our infrastructure cost. If someone wants machines, I can create them easily using the solution. VMware Workstation is easier to manage than other workstations like Oracle Workstation. VMware Workstation is an easy-to-manage solution, and its support is really good compared to other market players. Overall, I rate VMware Workstation an eight out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"What I like best about this product is that it's free."
"The stability is rock solid."
"The solution is easy to use. You can spin one up when you need to and then shut it down."
"It's a very mature product."
"Ability to patch with no downtime."
"Its ease of management and simplicity are most valuable. It is free, and you can provision an unlimited number of VMs at no cost for clients. They also provide perfect support."
"It provides enhancements for network and storage configuration, policy-based management for delivering application resource flexibility, and a GUI."
"It is very useful for the project management of our company."
"VMware Workstation is great for migrating and patching operating systems."
"We are able to simultaneously run multiple operating systems in a single machine and have virtually no performance hit."
"The product is really easy to use."
"The performance is good."
"The most valuable feature of the VMware Workstation is the ease to create a development environment. When you have different ongoing developments, you often need to create a lot of different development environments. With this workstation solution, you can have a development environment for all the things you develop."
"Because the setup is so easy, this is a solution that can be used at a moment's notice."
"The most valuable features of VMware Workstation are the DirectX support, you can run Microsoft Hyper-V in virtual environments which is good for me to test different installations. Additionally, you can set up different VLANs, and overall it is a complete solution."
"The product is stable, very easy to deploy, easy to use, easy to configure, and easy to set up."
 

Cons

"The management can be improved more, and become more agile. It would be nice for it to become more rich in terms of UI. In addition, the replication to disaster recovery needs improvement."
"With our current OVM Manager version, migrating a VM from one repository to another repository was really complicated, especially editing and manually matching the configuration."
"The tool's price and stability could be better."
"There are currently issues with centralized storage."
"Oracle VM should be promoted more as an open-source and stable software."
"The usage could be easier, and more user-friendly."
"Not every upgrade goes smoothly, and after an upgrade, it sometimes stops working. There are cases where I had to downgrade the system to get it working again."
"If you do a gap analysis between VMware and Oracle VM, you can't do VM Snapshot. That's one thing you can't do. It's a sort of a snapshot, but it's not really Snapshot technology. It requires that you're running on CFS-2."
"The dashboard can be improved."
"It could have more platforms and CPUs."
"My experience with Workstation is limited, so I don't know all the functionalities of this tool. Maybe Workstation could add some more compatibility with other vendors."
"The GUI interface could be improved."
"It would be better if software updates occur automatically."
"Lacks the ability to clone onto another system rather than starting from scratch."
"VMware Player should provide a cloud version with no limitations to hardware resources."
"The product’s virtual machine data backup feature needs upgrading."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the license is expensive."
"Pricing and licensing is one of the main decision making reasons for going to Oracle VM because it was cost effective."
"Oracle VM is free if you are running it on Oracle infrastructure hardware, otherwise, it is subscription-based."
"I recommend this for any customer wanting to reduce their licensing costs for packaged applications."
"The price compares well with other solutions."
"Oracle VM is not expensive. I rate its pricing a three out of ten."
"Oracle's VM VirtualBox is a powerful, free, and open-source virtualization tool."
"With having a global contract, we get some discounts."
"With a VDI solution, there is always extra cost running a VDI solution but it's not for cost purposes anymore. In the beginning, it was to save money on hardware but at the moment it's other aspects that are more important why you should use a VDI solution."
"VMware Workstation has a high price than competitors in the market."
"Licensing fees are paid on an annual basis."
"The cost differs depending on the customer's requirement."
"Licensing costs are paid on a yearly basis."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"The price of the solution per workstation is approximately 200 Francs annually. We pay a total of 800 francs. Everything is included in the price such as the support."
"You need to pay for a license, but I don't think it costs that much. I think it's a one-time payment."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Server Virtualization Software solutions are best for your needs.
860,711 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better - Oracle VM or KVM?
I would prefer if KVM was easier to scale and not so limited. Overall the product has been helpful. It is easy to use, and was quite straight-forward to set up. Since I have been using KVM, I have ...
Which is better - Oracle VM or VMware VSphere?
Oracle VM seems to me to be kind of outdated. Nevertheless, it is fairly straightforward to use and maintain. The solution can just be set and you can forget about it, and the scalability is consid...
What do you like most about Oracle VM?
If you want to access the VM from anywhere over the Internet, you put it in a public subnet. So, VMs are linked to that. The subnets are linked to it. So, it's perfectly secured if it's a private n...
Which VMware solution would you go with - Workstation or vSphere?
VM Workstation’s setup is so easy, you can use it almost instantly, it works well with Windows and Linux. We like VM Workstation primarily to test environments to determine how well a solution will...
What do you like most about VMware Workstation?
The product is stable, very easy to deploy, easy to use, easy to configure, and easy to set up.
What needs improvement with VMware Workstation?
The product's integration capabilities are an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ambulance Victoria, Australian Finance Group (AFG), Avnet Technology Solutions, CERN, cloudKleyer, Danish Tax Authority (SKAT), Data Intensity, Dubai World, Engineers Australia, Enkitec, Groupe FLO, Guerra S.A. Implemento, s Rodovišrios, Interactive One, IT Convergence, Jesta Digital, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, KT, Kyoto Prefecture, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory / National Ignition Facility, Multinet Pakistan, National Australia Bank (NAB), Navis LLC, Overhead Door, Overstock.com, Paragon Data, Parks Victoria, Pella, Sunway Shared Services, St. Louis Metro, Terminales Ro de la Plata S.A., University of Massachusetts, Versace,
Akademiska Hus
Find out what your peers are saying about Proxmox, VMware, Microsoft and others in Server Virtualization Software. Updated: June 2025.
860,711 professionals have used our research since 2012.