The best free alternative to Proxmox Virtual Environment is VirtualBox, which is also Open Source. If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked more than 25 alternatives to Proxmox Virtual Environment and many of them is free so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement. Other interesting free alternatives to Proxmox Virtual Environment are XCP-ng, OpenStack, SmartOS and oVirt.
Open source VirtualBox offers powerful x86/AMD64 virtualization available freely under GNU GPL v2. Runs on Windows, Linux, Mac, Solaris hosts. Supports a vast array of guest OS like Windows, Linux, Solaris. Portable, lightweight, ad-free, with dark mode.
Server based hypervisor and desktop hypervisor are not the same
It is a Type 2 Hypervisor, not Type 1.
XCP-ng is a high-performance, enterprise-level hypervisor with a rich ecosystem and is the result of massive cooperation between individuals and companies. All commercial features are enabled with no commitment required to a support agreement.
Works like Citrix hypervisor, and could be managed for free by XCP console for many platforms and you may adopt Xen Orchestra for automation and WEB management (freemium also). Both products came from same company so it works seamlessly.
OpenStack OpenStack is a global collaboration of developers and cloud computing technologists producing the ubiquitous open source cloud computing platform for public and private clouds. The project aims to deliver solutions for all types of clouds by being simple to implement...
Openstack is for global companies, this solution is too expensive compare to Proxmox. Openstack is googd alternative to VMware vCloud Director for example.
SmartOS is a hypervisor lean enough to run entirely in memory, powerful enough to run as much as you want to throw at it. Provisioning is blindingly fast, thanks to zones and ZFS file system creation.
oVirt is a virtualization management application. That means that you can use the oVirt management interface ( the oVirt engine) to manage hardware nodes, storage and network resources, and to deploy and monitor virtual machines running in your data center.
Fully featured, actively developed, good high availability featureset
Microsoft Hyper-V Server is a free product that delivers enterprise-class virtualization for your datacenter and hybrid cloud.
Harvester is the next generation of open-source hyperconverged infrastructure solutions designed for modern cloud-native environments.
Lima launches Linux virtual machines on macOS, with automatic file sharing, port forwarding, and containerd.
The Simplest Cloud Management Experience Simple yet Powerful Turnkey Solution to Build Clouds and Manage Data Center Virtualization.
100% Open Source Private & Edge turnkey Cloud solution, built upon industry-leading technologies such as OpenStack, Kubernetes, Ceph and ArgoCD.
Danube Cloud is a cloud management software used for deploying, maintaining and automating cloud data centers and their processes.
bhyve (pronounced "bee hive", formerly written as BHyVe) is a type-2 hypervisor that runs FreeBSD 9+, OpenBSD, Linux and MS Window desktop (versions Vista, 7, 8/8.1/8.2 and 10), as well as MS Windows Server (versions 2008/2008R2, 2012/2012R2 and 2016 Technical Preview...
United States
France
EU
Germany
Sweden
Slovakia
Use cases have practically no overlap. Proxmox requires dedicated server hardware and is of no use to casual users with desktops, whereas VirtualBox is controlled manually with a GUI and would be highly inconvenient and inefficient for the kind of infrastructure Proxmox is designed for