MacVisor vs. VMware Fusion

Made for macOS 27 on Apple Silicon, and tested on 27.2.

Not supported yet. 26H1u1 predates macOS 27, and Broadcom's community moderator advises waiting ("Fusion on macOS 27: DON'T"), after crashes and failed VM setups on 27.0.1.

macOS 14, 15, 26 and 27 from Apple's installers or your own IPSW, with accelerated graphics, and set up for you on macOS 27 (account, SSH and guest agent). Apple allows two macOS VMs at a time.

Not on Apple Silicon: Broadcom states that Arm macOS isn't supported in a Fusion VM. macOS guests run only on Intel Macs.

Any ARM64 distribution: a signed catalogue of cloud images (Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Rocky, Alma, openSUSE, Alpine and more) set up by cloud-init, or any ARM64 ISO. Rosetta runs x86-64 Linux programs.

Arm Linux guests from an ISO, with open-vm-tools and OpenGL 3D acceleration on recent kernels.

Windows 11 on ARM, installed unattended from Microsoft's ISO with your account, Remote Desktop, optional SSH, the guest agent, Secure Boot and a TPM 2.0 that BitLocker can seal to. Needs macOS 27.2; no GPU acceleration.

Established. Fusion builds the ISO from Microsoft and adds a vTPM (which needs the VM encrypted); you run setup, then install VMware Tools, which brings DirectX 11 3D (no OpenGL). No shared folders or Unity on Arm, and no x86 Windows.

FreeBSD 15.1 and 16.0-CURRENT from FreeBSD's cloud images, with your SSH keys, the guest agent and snapshots. Console and SSH only, with no desktop, shared folders or clipboard.

FreeBSD 12 or later as an Arm guest, from the ISO with open-vm-tools; no VMware video driver, so the console starts at 1024x768.

FreeBSD- and Linux-based firewalls and routers, and appliances such as Home Assistant OS, booted as they are from their ARM64 images, with USB passthrough for Zigbee and Z-Wave radios.

No OVA or OVF import on Apple silicon. Raw or qcow2 images must be converted to vmdk by hand; Home Assistant OS runs this way, per community guides.

A signed catalogue of vendor cloud images (Linux and FreeBSD), or your own raw, ASIF or qcow2 image. cloud-init sets up your account, SSH keys, container runtime and home folder share from the New VM form or mvz create.

Installs from ISO; a cloud-image catalogue or cloud-init provisioning isn't a documented feature.

Docker, Podman, containerd or k3s, opt-in when you create the VM. The Docker or Podman socket and the k3s kubeconfig reach the Mac with no network setup.

None built in: the vctl container tool was removed in Fusion 25H2, so containers run inside a guest you set up yourself.

Installed for you: by cloud-init on Linux, over SSH on macOS 27 and FreeBSD, and by Windows setup. Older macOS and ISO installs use the guest tools disc; appliances can use a QEMU guest agent.

VMware Tools, installed by hand after Windows 11 setup, and open-vm-tools from the distribution in Linux guests.

One process per VM: a crash stops only that VM, and quitting the app or restarting the service stops none.

Each powered-on VM has its own vmware-vmx process and can keep running after its window closes; survival after quitting Fusion isn't documented.

Live (with memory) and disk-only snapshots of running VMs for every guest, near-free on APFS; suspend and resume; and shut down or suspend at logout, your choice.

Mature snapshot trees, AutoProtect snapshots every 30 minutes, hour or day, suspend, and full and linked clones.

Templates and instant linked clones that store only their own changes; every cloud-image VM is a linked clone of its image.

Full and linked clones, and VM templates created and deployed with vmcli.

Several storage locations on internal, external or network volumes; a running VM moves between them in one step (suspend, move, resume).

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

The mvz CLI covers nearly everything the app does, from creating VMs to snapshots, networks, firewall rules and the MCP server, with --json output and documented exit codes.

vmrun (power, headless starts, snapshots, clones, guest commands, port forwards), vmcli (VM creation, templates, devices) and the vmrest REST API.

NAT, bridged (also to a VLAN), and named shared and host-only networks, with up to four adapters per VM; every VM answers as <vm>.mvz.

NAT, host-only and bridged networking, plus named custom NAT and private networks in Settings > Network.

Creates 802.1Q VLAN interfaces on the Mac (tags 1-4094) for VMs to bridge to, or for a shared network to use as its uplink.

Bridges a VM to a chosen Mac interface; no 802.1Q VLAN interfaces or tagging, and bridging to a macOS VLAN interface isn't documented.

Per-network DHCP with MAC-to-IPv4 reservations, by hand or made for cloud-init VMs automatically (within macOS 27's network limits).

Per-network DHCP on or off and a custom subnet; address reservations mean hand-editing dhcpd.conf, which Broadcom doesn't document.

TCP and UDP forwards on shared networks, reachable from other devices, plus per-VM forwards through the guest agent; Linux VMs forward their listening ports to the Mac automatically.

Port forwarding on NAT networks, from Settings > Network or vmrun (TCP or UDP).

Allow and deny rules per network (protocol, address range, port), enforced by the Mac's packet filter outside the guest, even with the app closed. IPv4 only.

No firewall rules. Isolation comes from the network type: a private network without NAT reaches only the host and its VMs.

Per-network switches for DHCP, DNS, NAT44, NAT66 and IPv6 router advertisements, plus the subnet, IPv6 prefix, MTU and uplink.

Per custom network: NAT, DHCP, subnet, MTU and IPv6 on NAT networks; no DNS proxy, NAT66 or router-advertisement switches.

A built-in MCP server (Tech Preview): Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and other agents use only the VMs you open to them, to run commands, read and write files, take snapshots and roll back, or see the screen. Local only, with every call logged.

No official MCP server or AI-agent integration. Community MCP servers list VMs and change power state through vmrest.

Per VM: Off (the default), View (state, screenshots, reading files) or Control (power, commands, files, snapshots, keyboard and mouse), set in VM Settings or with mvz set. Agents can't open a VM themselves, delete your snapshots or read stored passwords.

No official MCP server. A community one controls VMs through vmrest with no per-VM scoping, read-only mode, confirmation prompts or audit log, so an agent reaches every VM.

AI sandboxes (Tech Preview): coding agents such as Claude Code and Codex run in a disposable Linux or macOS VM with a copy of your project, API keys kept on the Mac and allow-listed internet; you review the diff before it lands.

No sandboxes for AI coding agents. A linked clone gives a throwaway VM by hand, with no project copy, network allow list or reviewed diff.

Runs unattended with the app closed: VMs start at login, and High Availability restarts one that crashes. From 27.2.1, a watchdog, health checks and hooks restart VMs that stop responding.

VMs can run in the background, start headless with vmrun, and start when Fusion launches. Start at login without Fusion, crash restart, watchdog and health checks aren't documented.

Built in from 27.2.1: daily, weekly or on demand, to another drive or a network share, running VMs included, checked by SHA-256 and restorable on any Mac.

No built-in VM backups. AutoProtect snapshots stay inside the VM; Broadcom advises copying the shut-down bundle and excluding VMs from Time Machine.

Clipboard, file transfer, port forwards, guest addresses and a clean shutdown over a virtual socket, with no network needed; VirtioFS shared folders, and Rosetta for Linux.

VMware Tools (open-vm-tools on Linux) for the clipboard, graphics drivers, and running programs or copying files from vmrun. On Apple Silicon, shared folders work only in Linux guests, and Unity is gone.

macOS guests get accelerated graphics on the Mac's GPU. Linux and Windows guests have no GPU acceleration (Windows at any resolution on MacVisor's own display device). One display per VM.

DirectX 11 3D acceleration for Windows 11 on Arm (from Fusion 13.5; no OpenGL there) and OpenGL 4.3 for Arm Linux guests.

Per-VM CPU, memory, GPU, disk and network readings, a host dashboard of what VMs use against what the Mac has, a menu bar menu for headless Macs, and a task history.

A Virtual Machine Library and connections to remote ESX hosts; a host dashboard of allocation against capacity isn't documented.

Free 30-day trial, no card needed. MacVisor 27 Pro is one-time: $59 for one Mac, $79 for two Macs (launch prices until 1 December 2026, then $69, $99), with every feature and every 27.x update. MacVisor Business is $79 per Mac a year from 3 Macs ($99 from 1 December 2026), with new major versions, email support (first reply within 2 business days, IST) and help deploying through your MDM. Enterprise support by quote.

Free for personal, educational and commercial use, with no license key. Downloads need a Broadcom account, the in-app updater has been retired, and there are no support tickets, only documentation and community forums.