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VMware Fusion Pro vs VMware Workstation comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

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

VMware Fusion Pro
Ranking in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Workstation
Ranking in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
3rd
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 August 2026, in the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) category, the mindshare of VMware Fusion Pro is 5.6%, down from 20.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Workstation is 9.5%, down from 15.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Workstation9.5%
VMware Fusion Pro5.6%
Other84.9%
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
 

Featured Reviews

Bruce Lundberg - PeerSpot reviewer
Linux HPC Systems Administrator at a manufacturing company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Create custom virtual environments quickly with minor macOS integration issues
The primary advantage of VMware Fusion Pro is its simplicity in creating custom virtual machines. It allows quick construction and provides connectivity to full VMware server systems, enabling remote management. It facilitates downloading images from main VMware servers for local testing. The ability to construct a virtual environment on my laptop meets my needs, even ones I wasn't aware of.
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

"Veeam Backup and Replication is the common product for backing up virtual machines."
"For me, VMware Fusion Pro has been invaluable, allowing me to meet all my needs with a single system."
"It is a highly stable solution."
"The primary advantage of VMware Fusion Pro is its simplicity in creating custom virtual machines."
"The most important feature of VMware Fusion is that it helps me rapidly launch a new OS."
"VMware Fusion Pro offers simplicity of use and stability."
"My advice right now would be to download it for free and use that instead of a VirtualBox or some of the other free stuff because it is more flexible than other solutions."
"The product is easy to use and has a simple user interface."
"The features are good."
"VMware player is a very good alternative for those who want a stable and free virtualization platform that can be easily run in various Operating System platforms like Windows, Linux, Macintosh etc."
"We initially intended to work with Hyper-V because we are selling a virtual appliance and thought our customers would want to run that on Hyper-V."
"I have found this product excellent for test/dev environments. This is 90% of what I use this product for."
"VMware Workstation’s most valuable feature is virtualization technology."
"In general, it's saved us time and money."
"Because the setup is so easy, this is a solution that can be used at a moment's notice."
"The platform’s most valuable feature is snapshot."
 

Cons

"VMware Fusion's licensing cost needs improvement."
"Fusion is not meant to be scalable. It runs on desktops and laptops, indicating limitations in scalability."
"The backups for the VMs themselves can also be improved. I pretty much have to rely on Windows backups and not something on VMware."
"Its installation process could be simpler."
"I would like to see newer and updated cloud functions."
"The only issue I've experienced with VMware Fusion Pro is that it doesn't register correctly with the main macOS system, causing repeated notifications about background installations. This is a minor inconvenience."
"One of the problems with VMware Fusion Pro is limited redundancy; it is related to the infrastructure and the nature of the on-premises because on-premises you cannot have enough reliability since you have to fund all the resources on your own."
"Additionally, enhancing the API interactions could improve the ability to manage VS and deploy various kinds of guests."
"Installing VMware Workstation isn't so easy. It's highly complex compared to Windows. I rate it four out of 10 for ease of installation. Setting up a remote desktop only takes a minute or so, but the Workstation itself takes some time."
"There could be more integration with different tools."
"The big issue that we've always had with VMware, was the disparity between what was presented for a Windows-based client and a Linux-based client. The Windows client was always two or three releases ahead of the Linux client. We always wanted VMware to change and improve the feature sets between the client connector on Linux and on Windows."
"In v6, it was a 32bit environment with a maximum memory of 4Gb RAM. Therefore, this required a high level of swap out of RAM to disk in order to provide sufficient memory space to run VMs, this occasionally caused system crashes."
"The problem we are facing with stability is that the network adapter causes crashes of the VM when we're using it for developing purposes."
"The tool can improve network storage technology."
"VMware Workstation uses more resources like CPU and disk space, especially the CPU, which is a shortcoming that needs improvement."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Starting with version 12, it is now free on a Mac for personal use. Fusion Pro has a cost."
"The cost varies depending on the season and whether it is scaled up or scaled down, but I would guess that it's approximately $1,000 per month."
"I rate the product's pricing a seven or eight. It is highly-priced."
"You need to pay for a license, but I don't think it costs that much. I think it's a one-time payment."
"The licensing costs are cheap. I pay approximately $100 per year."
"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, with ten being expensive."
"It has the best licensing modules."
"VMware Workstation has a high price than competitors in the market."
"It is an expensive solution."
"VMware is expensive. Licensing can be tricky. For example, I recently had a client running VMware vSphere Essentials and wanted to migrate to a more scalable solution. However, they had no choice but to purchase a completely new license and deploy a completely new instance of VMware."
"The solution's pricing is almost the same as what Google Cloud, AWS, or Microsoft would charge you."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
17%
University
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
12%
University
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise18
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Fusion?
The pricing of VMware Fusion Pro is reasonable. The licensing covers all minor version updates, while major updates require payment every three years. Buying it once can sustain you for years witho...
What needs improvement with VMware Fusion?
In future updates of VMware Fusion Pro, I think there should be another community to input features. It is an infrastructure tool that may need embedding some AI to help or catching up with the new...
What is your primary use case for VMware Fusion?
My specialty is about IBM AS/400 applications, so I got to be in contact with several packages, including LX, which is why I had this research on your website.I'm mostly interested in ERP packages;...
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

NetApp
Akademiska Hus
Find out what your peers are saying about VMware Fusion Pro vs. VMware Workstation and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.