We performed a comparison between KVM and Oracle VM VirtualBox based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Both KVM and Oracle VM VirtualBox have their strengths and weaknesses. Oracle VM VirtualBox seems to be the more favorable choice of the two, since it offers good scalability whereas scalability seems to be an ongoing issue for KVM users.
"The performance is great."
"It is easy to use, stable, and flexible. It is a pretty mature product, and it is faster than VirtualBox."
"A very reliable solution which can be used for x86 architecture virtualization with reasonable overhead."
"The most helpful aspect of KVM is the fact that the interface is so minimal. It includes just what you need to set up the VMs and manage them, and it's very simple to do so."
"The GUI interface makes the management of KVM easier than ever before."
"What I like most about KVM is that it's very easy to use. Everything is built-in, even when writing command lines."
"I like that it's easy to manage. It's also more powerful when it comes to security than others. That point of view is the one consideration. The other consideration is that it's cost-effective."
"Our production servers are running in Linux, and this solution supports that environment well."
"The solution has high performance and is easy to use."
"The product’s most valuable feature is the ability to manage multiple operating systems through one application."
"The flexibility and the closed platform, so it allows you to run in multiple platforms, Windows, Linux, Macintosh."
"Oracle VM VirtualBox is easy to use."
"The solution is very convenient and easy to use."
"The product gives us the flexibility to try different machines."
"It's a pretty good product in terms of monitoring."
"This product is very user-friendly and easy to use."
"The initial setup of this solution is more difficult than some of the competing products and it could be improved."
"The virtual manager and the graphical QEMU for KVM need some improvement."
"Its resource usage can be improved."
"In our setup, we do not have any dashboards or orchestration, and it is hard to manage. We have 25 gig network cards, but the software driver we have only supported 10 gigs."
"I believe KVM offers a unified answer, while ProxMark addresses orchestration. KVM lacks orchestration. If the aim is to centrally oversee multiple KVMs – let's say to freeze them – a centralized management solution is absent."
"Some things are pretty basic, and they could be more robust with more detail."
"One problem I have is that it's not very scalable when it comes to resizing the VM disk dimensions. For example, if you have initially set a virtual drive to 10 GB and you want to upgrade it to 15 GB, it's not that easy."
"The only negative aspect of needing hardware support is a fully functional KVM can be dropped. It would be nice if the support for other platforms, like ARM or Risk, were as good as the x86 one. However, with the democratization of Chromebooks based on these chips and mobile devices, it will not take long for that to happen."
"The AI and the UI could be improved. The user interface is a little outdated and the AI is not very attractive."
"It could improve slightly with enhanced reporting capabilities that show the current status of the network."
"Having live migrations to move a running server to other hardware would be great."
"It's not as robust as server platforms, nor does it need to be."
"It should have the functionality where if I move the mouse away from one screen, the context changes automatically."
"They could improve the graphics functionality of the product."
"The solution lacks some open source remote administration tools. The reload of individual virtual machine definitions through the vboxweb service (via its API) without restarting it and the access to shared storage (to use teleport functions) need to be improved."
"I think that this solution should be more user-friendly."
KVM is ranked 4th in Server Virtualization Software with 39 reviews while Oracle VM VirtualBox is ranked 5th in Server Virtualization Software with 61 reviews. KVM is rated 8.0, while Oracle VM VirtualBox is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of KVM writes "Delivers good performance because of kernel-based virtualization". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Oracle VM VirtualBox writes "The solution is versatile, simple to use, and stable". KVM is most compared with Proxmox VE, Hyper-V, VMware vSphere, VMware Workstation and Oracle VM, whereas Oracle VM VirtualBox is most compared with Proxmox VE, Hyper-V, Oracle VM, VMware Workstation and VMware vSphere. See our KVM vs. Oracle VM VirtualBox report.
See our list of best Server Virtualization Software vendors.
We monitor all Server Virtualization Software reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.