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 have found KVM to be scalable."
"It is easy to use, stable, and flexible. It is a pretty mature product, and it is faster than VirtualBox."
"The most valuable feature of KVM is its stability."
"It is an open ecosystem, and we see there is a benefit in open-source solutions."
"Scaling the solution is easy. You just have to add more hardware."
"What I like most about KVM is that it's very easy to use. Everything is built-in, even when writing command lines."
"If you prefer command-line, there are all kinds of command-line options."
"If you are a Linux desktop user, KVM is the solution to go with if you have to start virtual machines with Linux or other operating systems with almost zero extra configuration needed."
"This solution can be used on many different platforms including Windows and Linux."
"This product is very user-friendly and easy to use."
"The good thing is that it is multi-platform. Once you create a virtual machine in one particular environment, you can switch over to see if you can run it in other environments. For example, if you are on Windows and you create this virtual machine, you can actually go ahead and change the operating system. You can switch it over to Linux or Mac OS and see if you can run the VirtualBox on those particular machines. It even runs on some of the commercial operating systems that are not mainstream, such as Solaris and BSD. These kinds of operating systems are also supported by VirtualBox. The other thing that is good about VirtualBox is that it is open source. So, if you need to do any modifications for your own purposes, you can just download the source, modify it, and deploy it in your environment. It is pretty good and very versatile. You can create and manipulate virtual machines from the command line, which is also very important. It's something that some other products on the desktop side do not have. VMware Fusion and Parallels Desktop don't have a good command-line interface to create and manipulate virtual machines, whereas VirtualBox has it out of the box, which is pretty good."
"The flexibility and the closed platform, so it allows you to run in multiple platforms, Windows, Linux, Macintosh."
"I like that Oracle VM is safe and stable. It is also very easy to administer. For example, opening a VM or adding a host adapter is extremely easy."
"It's a pretty good product in terms of monitoring."
"The pause feature is valuable. I can pause, which is something that not all hypervisors allow. The snapshot feature is also valuable."
"I think VirtualBox has good stability because I use it in an environment with several resolutions."
"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."
"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."
"I would like to see more focus on microservices and integration with Kubernetes or OpenShift."
"I have encountered difficulties in getting the tool's documentation."
"The speed is around thirty percent slower than another competitor. This would be something to work on."
"Monitoring and resolution could be improved."
"In KVM, snapshots and cloning are areas where there could be a little more sophistication, like VMware."
"One thing that maybe could be improved is making it easier to scale. It needs to be more clear on how to scale the storage space for virtual machines."
"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."
"The communications setup lags. It does not connect properly so the batching and networking is a bit slow."
"This should have better support for multiple network cards and some parts of the GUI should be improved."
"Basically, the GUI and command-line interface need improvement."
"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 solution needs to improve its flexibility. It's not as flexible as VMware."
"The user interface needs to be improved."
"Oracle VM VirtualBox doesn't work properly with an antivirus tool."
KVM is ranked 4th in Server Virtualization Software with 38 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.