MacVirtualization

UTM and Oracle VirtualBox are both free and fully open source, and the real difference between them is how each caught up to Apple Silicon. UTM was built ground-up for Apple platforms rather than ported from elsewhere: on Apple Silicon it uses Apple’s own Hypervisor framework for near-native ARM64 guest performance, and falls back to QEMU emulation — slower, but far broader, covering x86/x64 and older architectures like PowerPC — for everything else; it can even run extra macOS guests on Apple Silicon Macs, useful for testing across OS versions. An optional $9.99 Mac App Store version is the identical app, and buying it just funds development and adds automatic updates. VirtualBox, Oracle-backed, only picked up native Apple Silicon support as of version 7.1. One nuance worth knowing: the base VirtualBox app is genuinely free under the GPLv3, but its separate Extension Pack (USB 3.0 support, disk encryption) is free only for personal or educational use, with a paid Oracle license required for commercial use.

Parallels Desktop, from Parallels International GmbH, is the paid pick that trades cost for polish and official backing — it’s the only app in this section officially authorized by Microsoft to run Windows 11 Arm editions on Apple Silicon, with two-click setup that sources the Windows image for you rather than leaving you to find one. Its pricing rewards reading past the headline number, though: Standard runs $54.99/yr (discounted from $99.99) for a subscription that keeps working across future macOS and Windows releases, or $219.99 as a one-time purchase locked to its current version with no such guarantee going forward; Pro, aimed at developers who need more virtual RAM and vCPUs plus nested virtualization for tools like Docker, is subscription-only at $65.99/yr.

The other two step outside that comparison entirely, for opposite reasons. Multipass, from Canonical (the company behind Ubuntu) and also free and open source, isn’t a general-purpose VM app at all — no GUI, no Windows or macOS guests, just fast, scriptable Ubuntu instances launched from the terminal with a single command and configured with cloud-init the same way you’d set up a real AWS or Azure server; it’s built for simulating a cloud deployment locally, not running a desktop OS in a window. VMTek, from small indie developer Cyaneous Inc., is a newer, smaller alternative to UTM built on Apple’s Virtualization framework, with a graphical snapshot manager, APFS-aware disk cloning, and Retina-aware guest resizing aimed at feeling native rather than ported. It’s a free 7-day trial, then a one-time in-app purchase to unlock permanently — no subscription, ever, per the developer — though the exact unlock price isn’t published outside the App Store listing.