MacVisor vs. VMware Fusion

Not supported.

Windows 11 ARM is supported on Apple Silicon.

Installers for macOS 14–27 from a catalogue or your own IPSW; macOS 27 guests get an account, Remote Login, and the agent set up on first boot.

Supported, though Windows and Linux are more prominent in current product positioning.

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.

Installs from ISO; a vendor cloud-image catalogue or cloud-init provisioning 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; 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.

VMware Tools or open-vm-tools, installed inside the guest; Easy Install can add them for supported guests.

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.

VMware desktop hypervisor architecture and virtual hardware stack.

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

Each VM runs in a vmware-vmx worker process; whether running VMs continue independently of the Fusion application is not established from official material.

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 trees, suspend, full clones, and linked-clone 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.

Full and linked clones.

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.

Current releases include vmcli for VM control.

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

Fusion provides NAT, host-only, bridged, and custom vmnet networks through its network editor.

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

Custom bridges and host-interface selection are documented; built-in creation of an 802.1Q 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.

Custom subnets and DHCP settings are configurable; a first-party MAC-to-address reservation workflow is 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.

NAT port forwarding is documented.

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-custom-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.

NAT, DHCP, and DNS proxy services are documented, but not an equivalent per-network NAT66/IPv6 RA switch set.

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.

VMware Tools for integration, shared folders, graphics, and guest operations.

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

3D acceleration for supported Linux guests; Apple Silicon GPU support remains more limited than on Intel.

Per-VM CPU, memory, disk, GPU, and network readings, a host dashboard that compares allocation with capacity, a task pane with history, and a log per VM runner.

Strong desktop VM management; local fleet/storage operations are less central.

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 for personal and commercial use.