VMWare Workstation works on an desktop machine, but ESXi works on a server (try to run ESXi on a desktop). With this in mind, the perfomance of ESXi is superior than a VMWare Workstation.

The CLI on ESXi only can be executed from a windows PC (if you use the free ESXi). The other option is very, very expensive compared with KVM. This is a major reason why I prefer KVM over VMWare. The support of scripting in ESXi free is very limited, in the other hand, KVM…