MacVisor vs. VirtualBuddy

Catalogue installers for macOS 14–27 or a local IPSW; macOS 27 guests skip Setup Assistant and get an account, Remote Login, and the agent on first boot.

Built-in restore-image catalog, latest stable image, local IPSW, or custom URL.

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.

Some ARM Linux distributions can be installed; no cloud-image catalogue or cloud-init provisioning is documented.

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 part of the reviewed feature set.

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.

VirtualBuddyGuest is installed inside a macOS guest from a mounted image.

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.

No first-party CLI is documented in the project feature list.

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.

Desktop-app VM workflow; persistent service ownership is not a documented feature.

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

No. VirtualBuddy owns its VZVirtualMachine instances in-process and warns that quitting while VMs are running can cause data loss.

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.

Save/restore VM state plus manual APFS-efficient VM duplication.

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.

Manual VM duplication is documented; no template library is documented.

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.

A single library folder, chosen in settings.

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

The current configuration model exposes per-VM NAT or bridge modes, without named shared-NAT or host-only segments.

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

Bridge interface selection exists, but built-in creation of a host 802.1Q VLAN interface is not present in the documented configuration model.

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.

The reviewed network model contains no custom DHCP scope or address-reservation configuration.

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.

The reviewed network model contains no first-party network or per-VM forwarding-rule configuration.

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.

The reviewed NAT-or-bridge network model contains no per-network host-firewall policy.

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

The reviewed network model contains no per-network DHCP, DNS, NAT44/NAT66, or IPv6 RA controls.

macOS and Linux agents over vsock carry mvz shell and exec, the per-VM Docker socket, clipboard, bidirectional file transfer, port tunnels, and live IP information; VirtioFS shared folders.

VirtualBuddyGuest adds clipboard and shared-folder mounting for macOS.

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

Apple Virtualization graphics for macOS and Linux guests.

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.

Free and open source under the BSD 2-Clause license.