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Parallels Desktop vs VMware Workstation comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 5, 2024

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

Parallels Desktop
Ranking in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
8th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Workstation
Ranking in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
57
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) category, the mindshare of Parallels Desktop is 4.5%, down from 14.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Workstation is 9.8%, down from 17.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Workstation9.8%
Parallels Desktop4.5%
Other85.7%
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
 

Featured Reviews

MH
Payments Architect at Self Employed
A great platform to develop interoperable code on
The decision to transition away from Intel chips to their silicon. They are processing, and there are many examples. Instead of not having a product to use for a while, they have just released it now. However, if you're seeking a product that is industry-ready regularly or has plans to make it so, considering the upcoming changes, I recommend trying out Parallels Desktop in beta. When you're only dealing with Windows, we do much in the Windows version, but it is not improving the Windows operating system. If you're hosting a Windows platform or another version of the machine, the code will have limitations. Windows is not a walled garden, with no significant volatility or instability. Windows is quite versatile. I never encountered intrusive ads or unused features, which is quite good. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
GC
Director of IT at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Creating and destroying test machines has simplified our operations and reduced manual recovery time
The Snapshot feature has helped with workflows by allowing us to more easily reconstruct something if we lose it or need it. We've been making Snapshots on a consistent basis, mainly of servers. The VX Rail has worked effectively because we can create machines as we need them. It's helpful for resetting and has helped with our operations because I had set up failover servers on Vertex, but we don't have to do that anymore since VMware will just create a new machine immediately if we have a problem. We're doing our domain servers on there, and we've been very happy with that. We appreciate that we can create machines simply to test things out and then destroy them. I use it for a test machine for checking emails, so if the email has a virus in it, we can just destroy the machine and create a new one. We're slowly moving into the VMware environment, although the pricing with Broadcom has been a disaster.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Parallels Desktop integrates seamlessly with macOS. It works better than VMware on Apple operating systems."
"I like how, with Parallels, you can either boot into Mac or Windows to get better control over the resources of the laptops since you're sharing the resources in dual mode."
"VMware Workstation’s most valuable features are backup and data transfer from one server to another."
"Technical support is very good."
"VMware workstation is expensive but with its excellent features and performance for a desktop, the cost is nothing."
"VM management - ability to very easily create and manage multiple VMs of various platforms, with portability and ease of saving and copying entire VMs from machine to machine."
"The product's initial setup phase was simple."
"It paid for itself multiple times, especially when we had to pull in older Windows 2003 servers for disk manipulation."
"The Snapshot feature has helped with workflows by allowing us to more easily reconstruct something if we lose it or need it."
"For all the interface customers, VMware is a one-stop solution for all the virtualization needs."
 

Cons

"The biggest challenge is compatibility between VMware and Parallels because the two systems are incompatible. It can be challenging if you are switching between Windows and Mac. I recommend sticking with one product because there isn't good compatibility between the different products."
"There may have been some issues with device drivers on my Mac. Similarly, there are some issues with transferring data from Parallels to the Mac."
"The network configuration was not as easy as it could be and could take less time. We faced challenges with backup due to limitations in the free version, requiring us to switch to a paid version."
"I need to buy a newer version of the tool to support Windows Server."
"The price of VMware Workstation is an area of concern where improvements are needed."
"I would like to see the stability improve. We have experienced some crashes on our devices."
"The tool has limited scalability."
"If you have a big environment with thousands of servers, VMware Player can have problems, and migrations can be extremely slow."
"It's been a struggle at times to keep drive shares and video drivers working across updates."
"The initial setup is quite easy, but can be daunting to someone unfamiliar with desktop computing environments."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The product is expensive."
"The cost differs depending on the customer's requirement."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"The solution is moderately priced. I rate the pricing a six out of ten."
"VMware Workstation has a high price than competitors in the market."
"The licensing costs are cheap. I pay approximately $100 per year."
"Licensing fees are paid on an annual basis."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
University
9%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise18
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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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 needs improvement with VMware Player?
Here's what happened with us regarding the prices for VMware Workstation: we purchased everything through Dell, and as is common, we got busy and didn't get everything activated. By the time we tri...
What is your primary use case for VMware Player?
I have a bunch of VMware servers set up, including our domain servers, our data servers, and some test machines on VMware. We're not really using VMware Workstation as workstations. We've got a cou...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Lytro, University of Washington, Slalom, Veeva Systems, Oklahoma Christian University
Akademiska Hus
Find out what your peers are saying about Parallels Desktop vs. VMware Workstation and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
899,204 professionals have used our research since 2012.