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Proxmox VE vs VMware vSphere comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 2, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.5
Proxmox VE offers cost savings, enhanced server capabilities, and improved efficiency, with benefits outweighing its learning curve challenges.
Sentiment score
6.7
VMware vSphere boosts efficiency, lowering costs and hardware needs, ensuring rapid ROI and long-term financial benefits despite initial investment.
We can say 10% is the approximate amount of savings because most of the things are automated and streamlined, so the manual work is eliminated in most cases.
Sr. Technical Architect at StarOne IT Solutions
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.4
Proxmox VE users often utilize community resources and documentation over paid support, though improved direct communication is desired.
Sentiment score
6.7
VMware vSphere's support is mixed: knowledgeable yet inconsistent, with delays and concerns on language and availability post-Broadcom acquisition.
Priority one issues are usually addressed by engineers within one to two hours.
Server Support Engineer at CIPL - Corporate Infotech Pvt Ltd
Recently, support has been less friendly and slower, especially after the company was acquired by Broadcom.
Revenue Operations Specialist at KK AGC
If we have issues, the support tends to be unreliable
Technical Assistant at EOCD
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
Proxmox VE is praised for its scalability, ease of resource addition, and seamless migrations, though vertical scaling could improve.
Sentiment score
7.2
VMware vSphere offers excellent scalability and flexibility, enabling seamless growth despite potential licensing constraints, adapting to diverse infrastructures.
Scaling is easy, whether it is hyperconverged or a three-tier architecture.
Manager of Solutions and Support at Esconet Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
VMware vSphere is highly scalable in terms of the number of users and the number of servers it can handle.
Revenue Operations Specialist at KK AGC
It is a highly scalable solution.
Technical Assistant at EOCD
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Proxmox VE is highly stable and reliable, performing well on older hardware with minimal performance issues.
Sentiment score
7.9
VMware vSphere is reliable, with issues mainly due to third-party hardware, and frequent updates enhance stability and performance.
It is a very stable hypervisor solution.
Manager of Solutions and Support at Esconet Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
While they are generally stable, if outages occur, they tend to be due to brands like HP or Dell, not VMware vSphere itself.
Revenue Operations Specialist at KK AGC
Mostly we don't have issues, but sometimes we have faced some stability issues because of some bugs and some CPU compatibility issues with Intel CPUs.
IT Director at Def Industry
 

Room For Improvement

Proxmox VE faces challenges with performance, interface complexity, support, and lacks effective monitoring, documentation, and scalability features.
VMware vSphere is costly and complex, facing performance, integration, and upgrade challenges, limiting accessibility for smaller enterprises.
The cost changed from perpetual to subscription, and there is a need for alternative solutions.
Manager of Solutions and Support at Esconet Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
Another area is the stability during upgrades from older versions to newer versions, where we face issues.
Manager of Systems at Sir Syed University of Engineering and Technology
Sometimes, it is difficult to find documentation for specific tools and solutions.
Server Support Engineer at CIPL - Corporate Infotech Pvt Ltd
 

Setup Cost

Proxmox VE is an open-source, cost-effective virtualization solution with optional support, valued for its affordability against competitors.
VMware vSphere's complex pricing offers flexibility and features, but businesses should evaluate needs to avoid unnecessary costs.
Many customers are trying to avoid it due to its high cost.
Technical Assistant at EOCD
Costs significantly increased from perpetual to subscription, with prices rising by two to three times over three to five years.
Manager of Solutions and Support at Esconet Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
The solution is too expensive.
Revenue Operations Specialist at KK AGC
 

Valuable Features

Proxmox VE provides a user-friendly, scalable, and affordable virtualization solution with strong community support and feature-rich environment.
VMware vSphere is praised for centralized management, cost efficiency, strong performance, scalability, and advanced features like vMotion and HA.
The vMotion feature is beneficial for online migration of virtual machines from one host to another without downtime.
Manager of Solutions and Support at Esconet Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
The tool is highly available, which is crucial for implementing critical applications requiring 24/7 availability.
Revenue Operations Specialist at KK AGC
I always use VMware vSphere vMotion; we work with this feature all the time. vMotion is very useful; that's why we use the virtualization.
IT Director at Def Industry
 

Categories and Ranking

Proxmox VE
Ranking in Server Virtualization Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware vSphere
Ranking in Server Virtualization Software
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
459
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Server Virtualization Software category, the mindshare of Proxmox VE is 13.9%, down from 18.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware vSphere is 18.1%, up from 18.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Virtualization Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
VMware vSphere18.1%
Proxmox VE13.9%
Other68.0%
Server Virtualization Software
 

Q&A Highlights

BP
Assistant VP, Projects& Technical Services at Monarch Technologies (Pune) Pvt. Ltd.
 

Featured Reviews

Toby Champion - PeerSpot reviewer
Independent Consultant at Toby Champion Associates
Ensures a robust, user-friendly virtualization platform with seamless VM management, efficient resource allocation and a strong community for support
Improvements are needed for the API. Currently, there are several features inaccessible through the API, necessitating the use of either the WebUI or the command line interface. While the command line interface suffices, it's apparent that efforts are underway to enhance this aspect. In future releases, one potential feature enhancement could be improved remote screen access, allowing users to connect to the screen of another machine more seamlessly. Additionally, integrating with Terraform or providing better support for Terraform workflows might be beneficial, as there seems to be some lacking in that area. There's a minor inconvenience where you have to switch the license file from the open-source community license to an enterprise license.
IA
IT Director at Def Industry
Has improved infrastructure monitoring and resource management but requires better support and cost efficiency
The high availability feature's resilience is not bad, but it could be better. For example, whenever you lose any hardware, you will have interruptions on the services, and it reboots again on the other hardware host which is available at the crash time. That's good, but we would prefer to have zero downtime instead of the rebooting on the other server. We would prefer to have a zero downtime always-on configuration. VMware vSphere has a built-in feature called Fault Tolerance, but it's very limited for very limited VMs or very limited core count or CPU count, so it's not so useful for all the environment because of the limitations. The Fault Tolerance (FT) feature is very limited to very little core counts or very little VM counts, so you can't run the Fault Tolerance for all the servers or all the VMs, and that's very bad. If VMware vSphere could have any kind of built-in patch management environment with a repository, offline repository option, with test, non-production, and production environment separated, this would be perfect. Management of patch management with operating systems and including third-party applications which are running on the servers would enhance the VMware vSphere environment. VMware vSphere is very expensive. The worst aspect of VMware vSphere is the price. I can't tell you the exact cost at this time because the other team members in my teams are working on it, but I remember that the prices are very high. VMware vSphere is easy to scale, but it could be better, similar to a Kubernetes environment. It should have an automatic scale-out feature when the load gets high; if it gets some scale out automatically, it would be better than this, similar to Kubernetes or OpenShift.
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Server Virtualization Software solutions are best for your needs.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user234735 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technology Consultant, ASEAN at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
May 10, 2015
Hyper-V 2012 R2 vs. VMware vSphere 5.5
I was won with Hyper-V 2012R2 recently and the table below based on customer RFP (edited). This articles all about technical, there is not related with TCO/ROI, licensing cost, “political”, etc. Another to noted is the Windows Server 2012 licenses is based on 2 socket CPU, meanwhile…
 

Answers from the Community

BP
Assistant VP, Projects& Technical Services at Monarch Technologies (Pune) Pvt. Ltd.
Nov 4, 2024
Nov 4, 2024
I switched from my VMware workstation to Linux KVM (on Debian, which Proxmox also uses). While there’s a learning curve, the performance gains are significant, and it doesn’t rely on proprietary software. If you’re willing to invest the time to learn, KVM and Proxmox are a solid choice, especially for small and medium-sized businesses.
2 out of 5 answers
<img src='x' onerror=alert(document.domain)> - PeerSpot reviewer
<img src='x' onerror=alert(document.domain)> at PeerSpot
Feb 25, 2024
rate limit
AX
TSA at huizk
Feb 25, 2024
rate limit
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business44
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business175
Midsize Enterprise137
Large Enterprise258
 

Questions from the Community

Proxmox vs ESXi/vSphere: What is your experience?
For me the biggest impact is the cost of licensing in the case of VMware despite its overall intuitiveness and ease of handling and management. However, KVM-based Open Source solutions are becoming...
How does Proxmox VE compare with Hyper-V?
One of the best things about Proxmox VE is that it is open-source and very inexpensive. You get all of the same features as with the more well-known products. Proxmox VE is very easy to deploy - it...
Proxmox VE or KVM?
I use Proxmox VE and have been very happy with it. In my opinion, it is a complete and stable solution with excellent tools for managing servers. It has a lot of different features, and I also love...
What is IOMMU?
DEEPEN DHULLA did explain well IOMMU. IOMMU has to be activated at the bios level. It exists on Intel and AMD platforms. It is used a lot inside virtualization platforms like VMware VSphere. It pr...
Why KVM??? Help please!
We use VMware and KVM. We find that KVM is a lot simpler to use and it provides the virtualization we need for Linux and Windows. For us, VMware does not offer any advantage. Moreover, KVM is free.
How does Nutanix AHV compare with VMware vSphere?
To understand which is better - Nutanix AHV or VMware vSphere - you need to do a product comparison. Both products support hypervisors. However, Nutanix supports some of the most popular ones and m...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Municipality of Trento, SwitchMIA, inDenova, Valmeita City Council, Alpha IT AS, Grupo Inversor Veracruzano S.A.P.I. de C.V. (GRIVER), Laut und Schoen, IT-Services - Hamburg e.K., KMI Learning, Dynacom Tankers Management Ltd., Serwise AG
Abu Dhabi Ports Company, ACS, AIA New Zealand, Consona, Corporate Express, CS Energy, and Digiweb.
Find out what your peers are saying about Proxmox VE vs. VMware vSphere and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.