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.
"I find the density of the product most valuable. It is density that a technologist can just assign page merging. This is what makes KVM one of the important players of the virtualization market."
"The initial setup was very easy."
"I like that this is an open-source solution. It is very powerful, and it's easy."
"I think nine out of the ten supercomputers in the world use Linux KVM, so I think that attests to the fact that it is a scalable product."
"The tool's most valuable feature is backup. The product makes it easy to manage virtual machines. Other tools require third-party applications like VMware and vSphere. However, KVM doesn't require these applications."
"Scaling the solution is easy. You just have to add more hardware."
"The KVM service is well managed with a central policy interface."
"The GUI interface makes the management of KVM easier than ever before."
"I like that it is free and runs on Linux/Ubuntu - I wouldn't use any other solution. I am able to perform small developing tests."
"The snapshot feature is very powerful; it protects us from disaster."
"I think VirtualBox has good stability because I use it in an environment with several resolutions."
"The flexibility and the closed platform, so it allows you to run in multiple platforms, Windows, Linux, Macintosh."
"The flexibility as well as performance wise and as well as data volume, we have huge volume stored."
"The cloning is a very useful tool."
"This is a good and easy solution for running virtual environments."
"Technical support is good."
"The stability of this solution is less than other products in the same category."
"The solution’s user interface could be improved and made more user-friendly."
"The virtual manager and the graphical QEMU for KVM need some improvement."
"Business continuity features need to be added."
"There are some issues with the graphics and some software that is very complex."
"Technical support could be better. In the next release, I would like to see an improved user interface and dashboard. This type of improvement will make it easy or help our engineers understand the solution from a requirement point of view."
"Technical support is not top-notch."
"The KVM tech support is really bad. They are not very responsive."
"The installation is difficult and could be improved."
"One valuable feature would be for it to work right the first time but it doesn't necessarily do that."
"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 is a bit less stable than I would like."
"We're working with them to be able to allow the local USB ports to be ported over to the remote desktop, running VirtualBox."
"The user interface needs to be improved."
"Oracle’s support team should improve its response time."
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.