MacVisor vs. Parallels Desktop

Not supported.

A core, Microsoft-authorized use case.

macOS (installers for macOS 14, 15, 26, and 27, or your own IPSW) and ARM64 Linux.

Supported alongside Windows.

A signed catalogue of vendor cloud images (Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, CentOS Stream, openSUSE Leap, Oracle Linux, Alpine), plus import of your own qcow2, raw, or xz images and .ipsw installers. cloud-init is a settings page in the app and a set of create flags in the CLI: account, hostname, SSH keys, user-data, container runtime.

The Installation Assistant downloads several Linux distributions; cloud-init provisioning of the account, keys, and runtime is not a documented feature.

containerd, Docker, Podman, or k3s, opt-in in the New VM form or with --runtime (none by default). mvz docker <vm> forwards the VM's Docker or Podman API to a socket on the Mac through the guest agent with no network setup, and creates a docker context for it.

Not a documented feature of the desktop product; containers run inside a guest you set up yourself.

Zero-touch installation: cloud-init installs the agent in Linux VMs, and on macOS 27 guests MacVisor creates the account and installs the agent itself over SSH on the first boot. macOS 26 and earlier guests install it by hand from the attached volume.

Parallels Tools, installed during guided installation or from the Actions menu inside the guest.

Apple's accelerated graphics device for macOS guests, sharing the host GPU; Linux guests use Virtio graphics.

DirectX and OpenGL acceleration with dedicated VRAM for Windows applications and games.

Disk-only and live snapshots of running Linux and macOS guests, suspend and resume with saved state, pause, VMs shut down or suspended to disk when the Mac logs out or restarts (your choice), and revert with an optional safety snapshot.

Mature snapshot, suspend, and rollback workflows.

Templates and instant linked clones on ASIF disk layers (a clone shares a sealed base and stores only its own writes), with flatten and trim.

Templates, full clones, and linked clones (Pro and higher).

Several storage locations on internal, external, or network volumes, with cold migration of stopped VMs and warm migration that suspends, moves, and resumes a running VM in one step.

VM bundles can be stored anywhere and moved by hand while stopped; no in-app migration of a running VM is documented.

The mvz CLI has full parity with the app (create, shell, exec, lifecycle, snapshots, clones, networks, ports, files, tasks, service), with --json output and documented exit codes.

prlctl/prlsrvctl plus Packer, Vagrant, Jenkins, VS Code, and DevOps integrations in Pro.

A background service keeps VMs running after the app quits, and each VM runs in its own isolated runner process. Autostart at login and headless starts for CI.

Documented headless mode runs VMs as background processes.

One runner process per VM. Quitting the app, or restarting MacVisorService, does not stop running VMs.

Partially evidenced: each VM has a prl_vm_app process and can stay ready in the background, but official documentation does not promise survival if the shared control service is terminated.

Default NAT and bridging, plus named shared (NAT) and host-only networks; every VM is reachable by name as <vm>.mvz.

Shared and bridged modes are built in; Pro and higher editions can add named host-only networks, but not additional named shared-NAT networks.

Creates host VLAN interfaces (tags 1–4094) and bridges VM NICs or shared-network uplinks to them.

Parallels documents bridging a VM when the Mac is already connected to a VLAN; creation of the host VLAN interface is not established.

Per-network DHCP with MAC-to-IPv4 reservations (mvz networks reserve), within vmnet's limits on macOS 27: a shared network re-picks its subnet when it is recreated, and a host-only network with a fixed subnet gets no DHCP at all.

Shared and host-only DHCPv4/DHCPv6 ranges are configurable; MAC-to-address reservations are not documented.

TCP/UDP NAT rules on shared networks, plus live per-VM TCP and UDP tunnels through the guest agent; cloud-image VMs forward the ports they listen on automatically.

Shared networking supports host TCP and UDP port-forwarding rules.

Host-enforced IPv4 pf policy per network: inbound and outbound defaults with ordered allow/deny rules by protocol, CIDR, and port, set from the app or mvz networks firewall. IPv4 only; traffic between VMs on the same segment is not filtered.

An equivalent per-virtual-network host firewall policy is not documented or independently tested.

Per-network DHCP, DNS proxy, NAT44, NAT66, and IPv6 router-advertisement switches, plus IPv4/IPv6 and MTU settings.

DHCPv4/DHCPv6 settings are exposed, but equivalent per-network DNS, NAT44/NAT66, and IPv6 RA switches are not documented.

Nested virtualization for Linux guests on an M3 or later Mac.

The current product page documents Nested VT-x for Intel Macs.

Free 30-day trial key. MacVisor 27 Professional ($49, one individual) and Business ($99, organisations) are one-time licenses for one Mac covering every 27.x update; Enterprise starts at $99 per Mac per month, billed annually for 10 or more Macs, with 24x7 support and an SLA, by quote. Every edition has every feature.

Paid; Standard and Pro tiers are primarily subscription-based.