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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

"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."
"Parallels Desktop integrates seamlessly with macOS. It works better than VMware on Apple operating systems."
"Instead of relying on dual-boot operating systems, I can utilize open-source tools within my infrastructure. This approach allows me to create an in-house cloud platform suitable for testing. VMware Workstation enables me to perform tasks across various operating systems using a single device. It has helped me save time."
"This product is pretty straightforward and easy to use, and I would definitely recommend it for testing different scenarios, Windows, Linux, that sort of thing."
"Overall, this is a good product and I recommend it."
"VMware Workstation allows multiple operating systems in the same physical machine."
"VMware Workstation is great for migrating and patching operating systems."
"The initial setup is simple and takes only five minutes to complete."
"I have found this product excellent for test/dev environments. This is 90% of what I use this product for."
"Great at solving connection problems."
 

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."
"When you go to work on a server, it opens up the whole window, and that causes an error inside VMware Player."
"It would be helpful if VMware Workstation included an in-built monitoring tool for monitoring things."
"It would be great if VMware Workstation had more networking options and compatibility, that would be great. I would like to deploy virtual switches and play around with networking a bit more. Otherwise, I have to deploy ESXi Virtual Edition and emulate it, which is painful and clunky."
"The price of VMware Workstation is an area of concern where improvements are needed."
"The initial setup is quite easy, but can be daunting to someone unfamiliar with desktop computing environments."
"I have had issues with the virtual network adapters in the past that has taken some time to troubleshoot."
"Compared to Virtualbox, VMware Player is slightly heavier on resource usage than Virtualbox."
"The support can be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The cost differs depending on the customer's requirement."
"I use the free version of VMware Workstation."
"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."
"Licensing costs are paid on a yearly basis."
"The pricing is a bit steep in my opinion for testing and there are other options."
"It is an expensive solution."
"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."
"The tool is not the cheapest."
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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: June 2026.
899,324 professionals have used our research since 2012.