Parallels Desktop for Mac vs. VMware Fusion

Parallels Desktop for Mac

87 Reviews and Ratings

VMware Fusion

74 Reviews and Ratings

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting Price
Parallels Desktop for Mac	Score9.7 out of 10	N/A	Parallels® Desktop for Mac is used to run Windows on Intel or Apple silicon. Users can switch between Mac and Windows applications, while retaining the macOS appearance, or use the familiar Windows desktop aesthetic.	$99.99 per year
VMware Fusion	Score7.8 out of 10	N/A	Vmware Fusion is a virtual user session software built to run Windows applications on Macintosh to run any Windows applications.	N/A

Pricing

Parallels Desktop for Mac

VMware Fusion

Parallels Desktop Standard Edition: $99.99
per year
Mac App Store: $99.99
per year
Parallels Desktop Pro Edition: $119.99
per year
Parallels Desktop Business Edition: $149.99
per year

No answers on this topic

Pricing Offerings
Parallels Desktop for Mac	VMware Fusion
Free Trial
Yes	No
Free/Freemium Version
No	No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No	No

No setup fee

No setup fee

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Community Pulse
Key User Insights
	Parallels Desktop for Mac	VMware Fusion
Considered Both Products	Alludo Verified User Chose Parallels Desktop for Mac We have tried VMware Fusion and Boot Camp. However, the level of graphics that we get in Parallels is much better compared to the other two tools. The speed, overall performance, ease of access, and features are a lot better on Parallels. Overall integration with Mac resources … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Parallels Desktop for Mac Parallels [Desktop] is more polished and has a friendlier interface than VMware Fusion. While the VMware Fusion licensing model is simpler Parallels [Desktop] innovates faster and optimizes their product more often and with more features that customers want. At their core they … Incentivized Helpful? Jonah Dempcy Web & Mobile Developer in Engineering at Bluefire Productions (Computer Software, 1-10 employees) Chose Parallels Desktop for Mac I'm a longtime user of VMware Fusion and I still use it in some cases. We use it on RedHat Linux computers to run other Linux environments with specific software development environment configurations. I've also used VMware Fusion on a MacBook Pro laptop to run Windows and … Incentivized Helpful? Jason White Sr. End User Supt. Analyst in Information Technology at CDK Global (Computer Software, 5001-10,000 employees) Chose Parallels Desktop for Mac VMware Fusion is also a good product, but it tended to be a little more difficult to configure, and the price tag was higher in terms of the volume purchasing that we required. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Parallels Desktop for Mac Parallels Desktop ends up filling the sweet spot between free, but basic application (VirtualBox), and fully featured enterprise application (VMware Fusion.). Even at this point, we don't use all of the features of Parallels, but the perceived performance boost over VirtualBox … Incentivized Helpful? Stefan Boeykens sr. BIM Manager in Research & Development at D-studio (Construction, 1-10 employees) Chose Parallels Desktop for Mac I have used VirtualBox on Windows as a free alternative, as I only used it to access an old scanner without recent drivers. So far, I stick with Parallels, but the OpenGL limitations are said to be resolved better with VMware Fusion. But I currently don't want to migrate to … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Parallels Desktop for Mac Runs much smoother, support is better. Price set at the time was much better. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Parallels Desktop for Mac Parallels Desktop is faster when compared to other solutions, assuming that is for Mac computers only, is the fastest option and easiest to run Incentivized Helpful? Jose Almiñana SAP Solution Architect in Information Technology at Ebro Foods S.A (Consumer Goods, 5001-10,000 employees) Chose Parallels Desktop for Mac Main two features that made the balance decission go to the Parallels Desktop were the possibility to pause the Windows partition easily (allowing to consume less resources in Mac and save battery) and the other one is the user interface feature called "Coherence" with allows … Incentivized Helpful? Will Goad VP - Solutions in Professional Services at Workgroups DaVinci (Computer Software, 1-10 employees) Chose Parallels Desktop for Mac If you can follow a prompt and click a button, you can install Parallels. We chose Parallels because they make it so simple to buy, install, set up, and add licenses. I work with Creatives and getting them to run a Windows environment is a painful task. With Parallels, we can … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Parallels Desktop for Mac At the end of the day, it seemed like Parallels Desktop has the fastest product with a feature set that was most important to our users. Additionally, it seemed to hit a mark where it was easy enough for our less tech-savvy users, but powerful enough for our users that really … Incentivized Helpful? Bruce Carter Senior Systems Engineer in Information Technology at University of Notre Dame (Higher Education, 5001-10,000 employees) Chose Parallels Desktop for Mac Parallels provides what we need at a reasonable cost. VMware was a bit pricier, and Parallels has more of a "Mac-like" feel for the application itself. UTM and Crossover were a bit too "hacker-ish" for basic end users that just want to pop in and out of windows when … Incentivized Helpful?	VMware by Broadcom Verified User Chose VMware Fusion If you only need to run a single Windows VM for a handful of applications and do not need to do testing or run multiple operating systems, Parallels Desktop may be the better choice, especially for less technical end users. Parallels is a bit more user friendly. If you need … Incentivized Helpful? Matteo Bisi DevSecOps Engineer in Information Technology at SIGHUP (Computer Software, 11-50 employees) Chose VMware Fusion Oracle virtualbox has not reason to exist anymore, considering VMware Fusion pro is free for personal and not business use. I think VMware Fusion is better in every aspect. Parallels it's a great alternative, especially if you need only windows. If you need also linux Fusion is … Incentivized Helpful? Shion Song Art Director & Web Developer in Marketing at shion.ca (Marketing & Advertising, 1-10 employees) Chose VMware Fusion As mentioned previously, perpetual licensing was the #1 reason. The interface is also cleaner, simpler, and less bloat. Parallels also seem to run a bit slower. Fusion was also more stable and significantly faster in both raw performance and graphics compared to Virtualbox. … Incentivized Helpful? Jonah Dempcy Web & Mobile Developer in Engineering at Bluefire Productions (Computer Software, 1-10 employees) Chose VMware Fusion GitHub and Bitbucket are both used by our company for code sharing and are much easier to use for collaborative source code versioning. We internally use GitHub and have some clients who use Bitbucket. In some cases, we have software projects that are very hard to configure, … Incentivized Helpful? Stefan Semo Director of IT Infrastructure, Security & Compliance and Customer Service in Information Technology at Success Academy Charter Schools (Education Management, 201-500 employees) Chose VMware Fusion VMWare Fusion is easier to deploy and manage than Parallels and also has a much simpler and less expensive licensing system. For us these are win-win. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose VMware Fusion To be fair, with other products, if pricing was a problem for the organization, I would choose VirtualBox, because it works very well on Mac environment and it has most of the features that VMware Fusion has. However, I personally like the way I can run my Microsoft Windows … Incentivized Helpful? Aaron Pinsker Owner in Information Technology at Colorado Computer Care (Information Technology and Services, 1-10 employees) Chose VMware Fusion As Hyper-V is Windows specific product, and primarily designed for Windows Server, it is difficult to compare Fusion and Hyper-V as they cater to different customer needs. Comparing Fusion to Parallels is a bit more complicated as they are extremely similar products. Briefly, … Incentivized Helpful? Alex Waitkus, CISSP-ISSAP, OSCP Security Architect in Information Technology at Securicon, LLC (Computer & Network Security, 51-200 employees) Chose VMware Fusion VM Fusion is a leader. It has more functionality and capability for workstation virtualization application. Its unity view and resource management of virtual guests is far superior to any other Mac workstation virtualization applications on the market. Incentivized Helpful? Kurt Pritchett Senior System Engineer in Information Technology at Clayton County Public Schools (Government Administration, 5001-10,000 employees) Chose VMware Fusion VMware Fusion works much better for us because of the migration capabilities. We use VMware vSphere and the migration/conversion is seamless. Some of the other virtualization application do not covert or migrate VMs onto other platforms as easily. Incentivized Helpful? Andrew Shannon Director of Technology in Information Technology at Packaging & Distribution Resources (Education Management, 11-50 employees) Chose VMware Fusion VMware fusion is very similar to Parallels but is lower priced, so its my preferred solution for running Windows on a macintosh computer. Vmware is also made by a much more well known company with a large support staff in place, so getting help with vmware fusion is always … Incentivized Helpful? Zach Cooper Site Reliability Engineer in Information Technology at AdvancedMD (Computer Software, 501-1000 employees) Chose VMware Fusion Fusion seems to run better than Parallels. It also is much more user friendly and intuitive to use. Incentivized Helpful? Gabriel Duff Macintosh Service Desk Technician III in Information Technology at Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) (Information Technology and Services, 1001-5000 employees) Chose VMware Fusion All of this changes from year to year, too. Parallels and VMware both require that you buy an annual license every year to get updates that pack in performance gains and feature improvements. These annual updates are great in theory, but they’re not cheap, and they come every … Incentivized Helpful?
	Would buy again
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Delivers good value for the price
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Happy with the feature set
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Lived up to sales and marketing promises
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Implementation went as expected
No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic

TrustRadius Insights
	Parallels Desktop for Mac	VMware Fusion
Highlights	Research Team Insight Published June 10, 2020 Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion are both remote desktop software designed to help users run windows software on computers running the Mac OS operating system. Both software options are most popular with mid-sized businesses, but VMware fusion is slightly more popular with larger enterprises, perhaps due to its integrations with other VMware software. Features Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion both offer essential remote desktop features such as screen capture and viewing, but they also have a few standout features that set them apart from each other. Parallels Desktop offers simple installation of multiple operating systems such as Windows and Ubuntu with a single click. Additionally, Parallels Desktop offers fast boots, with Windows boots generally finishing in under 5 seconds. Lastly, Parallels Desktop allows for optimized virtual machine resource usage by allowing for virtual machine pauses, and disk optimization. VMware Fusion provides high performance virtual machines, especially in terms of graphics. In benchmarking tests, Vmware Fusion performs better graphically than most remote desktop software including Parallels. VMware Fusion also offers support for high performance monitors, including 5k iMacs. Limitations Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion can both run Windows Software on Mac devices, but they have some limitations that are important to consider. Parallels Desktop performs well in CPU tests, but does not perform as well as VMware Fusion when it comes to graphics. Businesses looking for high performance graphics should consider other options. Compounding this issue, Parallels doesn’t include native support for 5k monitors, so businesses that need highest quality aesthetics may prefer VMware Fusion. VMware Fusion is more difficult to implement compared to Parallels. Multiple operating systems can be installed using VMware Fusion, but not with a single click. Additionally, while VMware Fusion performs well graphically, it doesn’t perform as well in CPU tests and takes longer to boot up virtual machines. Pricing Parallels offers a single price point for businesses, $99.99 per year for each license. VMware Fusion similarly offers a single rate for businesses, $79.99 per year per license.

Features

Parallels Desktop for Mac

VMware Fusion

Comparison of Application Virtualization features of Parallels Desktop for Mac and VMware Fusion
Feature	Parallels Desktop for Mac 8.7 2 Ratings	VMware Fusion - Ratings
Application support	8.12 Ratings	00 Ratings
Ease of deployment	9.12 Ratings	00 Ratings
Security	9.12 Ratings	00 Ratings

User Ratings
	Parallels Desktop for Mac	VMware Fusion
Likelihood to Recommend	9.2 (32 ratings)	8.0 (20 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew	10.0 (2 ratings)	10.0 (2 ratings)
Usability	10.0 (4 ratings)	8.0 (4 ratings)
Support Rating	9.0 (6 ratings)	10.0 (5 ratings)
Implementation Rating	10.0 (2 ratings)	10.0 (1 ratings)