--- title: "VirtualBox Reviews, Pros and Cons - 2026 Software Advice" description: "Reviews of VirtualBox. Learn how real users rate this software's ease-of-use, functionality, overall quality and customer support. Talk to our advisors to see if VirtualBox is a good fit for you!" source_url: "https://www.softwareadvice.com/vdi/virtualbox-profile/reviews/" page_type: "reviews" language: "en" --- [Home](https://www.softwareadvice.com/) / [Virtual Machine Software](https://www.softwareadvice.com/virtual-machine/) / [VirtualBox](https://www.softwareadvice.com/virtual-machine/virtualbox-profile/) / VirtualBox Reviews Software Advice offers objective insights based on verified user reviews and independent product and market research. When our advisors match you to a software provider, we may earn a referral fee. [Overview](https://www.softwareadvice.com/virtual-machine/virtualbox-profile/) Reviews [Alternatives](https://www.softwareadvice.com/virtual-machine/virtualbox-profile/alternatives/) # VirtualBox User Reviews ## Reviews summary - Overall rating: 4.6/5 - Total reviews: 888 ### Secondary ratings - Ease of use: 4.3/5 - Customer support: 4.1/5 - Value for money: 4.7/5 - Functionality: 4.5/5 ### Rating distribution - 5 stars: 548 reviews (62%) - 4 stars: 289 reviews (33%) - 3 stars: 49 reviews (6%) - 2 stars: 2 reviews (0%) - 1 star: 0 reviews (0%) ### Most mentioned pros - It is connectable to many devices, and many features can be added. and having it frequently updated with the latest, keeping the edge in performance in comparison to other alternative software. - Networking options are flexible too, so I can test things like NAT, bridged mode, etc. - It is my first choice for virtualisation on my laptop, and that is because of the ease of use, installation and deployment. And due to the fact that it provides many features for free. ### Most mentioned cons - The Guest Additions doesn't work properly with all the OSes, and also sometimes changing the screen size/resolution of the VM running might create an issue like flickering. - Performance isn’t always great when running heavy workloads. - VirtualBox supports 3D acceleration, but the performance may not match that of some dedicated virtualization solutions and there is obvious issue with audio support in it, including issues with sound quality. ## VirtualBox customer reviews Showing reviews 1-25 of 888 (page 1). ### VirtualBox, The little brother to the Workstation. - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Harshit B. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Telecommunications - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: January 2020 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. The ability to spin up and test instances of our application and also new flavours is the primary business purpose and virtual box ticks all thos boxes is a great asset to have to meet the business goals. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 3/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros Have been using VirtualBox to spam new distributions of linux and other open source operating systems and also use Virtual box to deploy our application as well and we use it as a benchmarking mechanism tool. #### Cons The least thing we like about this is the amount of compute it takes to run the application on the slight less specked machine and it does a take on the battery life, otherwise the application is good. #### Reasons for choosing VirtualBox The ability to use Virtual on OS-X is a primary factor to select Virtualbox as the images can be shared with multiple folks within the organisation. --- ### VirtualBox review - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Benny B. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Computer & Network Security - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: August 2023 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Free Opensource & Multi platform application for managing and deployment of Virtual machines. No matter if a new OS inside your main system or virtualize your own computer and use it as a Sandbox... #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 3/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros Easy to deploy new machines in no mater what your original desktop system comes from; you can virtualize a bunch of Linux, MacOS, Windows machines and ChromeOS & Android too! #### Cons In a Windows Server environment, the Virtual machines can't start when booting the main Server OS (only after you login with Administrator credentials) and you need the help of third party programs to do that. In Linux environment is easier to deploy thanks to Cron. #### Reasons for choosing VirtualBox Because not only the price, but the availability to choose Open Source software. #### Reasons for switching to VirtualBox We switch to VirtualBox caused by the same available options as VmWare (we solved the trouble about starting as a service using a third party app) and VirtualBox is not only free but Open Source and multiplatform. --- ### Great Virtual environment - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Education Management - Company size: 501-1000 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 2 years - Reviewed: April 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros This is a great product for making a virtual backup of my physical machine. I can use my computer virtually if it crashes until the hardware is repaired. #### Cons I had some trouble with the virtual machine format. --- ### Great choice for VMs in Mac - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Nicolas R. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Computer Software - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: September 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. I use Virtualbox to setup environments. I'm Mac user and I use daily vm to configure and deploy mainly linux distributions. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros When I started using Mac it was a problem for me, but when I started using VirtualBoxVM everything became easier. Easy Setup, Easy VM setup and administration, Easy everything. Runs fast. Even if I keep some VMs open. #### Cons I don't find any cons at all. Maybe the resource consumption, but that's really not on VirtualBoxVM, is cause of VMs assigned resources. #### Reasons for switching to VirtualBox Tryed parallels, but princing and performance made me decide for VirtualBoxVM --- ### Virtualization is awesome. - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Kevin M. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Information Technology and Services - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used monthly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: February 2020 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. I use Virtual Box to provide multiple services while retaining a single server. For the classroom VirutalBox provides students with an environment where they can experiment while keeping the base operating system secure and locked. The ability to preserve aging software is critical to many companies I deal with. Inability to upgrade or lack of migration options often means that they need to keep these programs running while replacing broken or old hardware. Snapshots help me to keep perfect copies of system content and provide 100% restores. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros The ability to quick install and work inside a virtual operating system with having to build an entirely new system. No messing around with hard disks and bios. Its great when you want to test out Operating System alternatives or when testing current systems via hard disk imaging. #### Cons No "out of the box" compatibility with Apple IOS operating system. This is obviously no fault of its creators as Apple has made use of its Operating System near impossible with its hardware but from a teaching perspective its a wasted opportunity especially for those learning helpdesk skills. #### Reasons for choosing VirtualBox Virtual Box is quick and very easy to install and configure and its survive the test of time while others are either become outdated or become not as simple to use. --- ### Best virtalization tool by oracle - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Information Technology and Services - Company size: 10000+ employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 2 years - Reviewed: December 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Mainly we use it to test on all major Operating systems as its portable to any System structure form UNIX to Windows #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Due to its open source nature and ease to use this is a best tool for any one from business to normal users allows use of any OS inside Windows (mainly) which makes testing easy on other OS like Linux (all flavors) #### Cons Not much any cons about this tool but it could be built more ease to use though its good but can be improved and all connections should be automatically detected inside virtual machine such though they work doesn't feel like real OS can adopt "NEW DESKTOP"like tech and improve it. #### Reasons for switching to VirtualBox Virtual machine is complicated and takes lot of time and system memory. --- ### VirtualBox as a tool to model configurations on virtual servers - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Government Administration - Company size: 10000+ employees - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: April 2022 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Virtualbox allows us to simulate environments using virtualization in a practical way, accelerating implementations and configurations in services #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros It is cross-platform, which allows easy installation on different operating systems. #### Cons In some occasions it is necessary to have hardware that supports virtualization #### Reasons for choosing VirtualBox The economic cost was higher, which does not allow all team members to use it --- ### Excellent alternative for virtual machines - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Richard S. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Machinery - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used monthly for less than 2 years - Reviewed: July 2022 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. I am somewhat experienced with VMWare Workstation, so I wasn't sure about switching to VirtualBox. Although it did require a little bit of getting used to, after learning the ropes I found that all of the features I knew and used were available to me, and for a significantly cheaper price. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros One important distinction between VirtualBox and its more well-known counterpart, VMWare Workstation, is the noticeably lower price-tag on the former. VirtualBox does not share the almost absurd price of VMWare, yet possesses most, if not all, of the same features. #### Cons It is slightly less intuitive than VM Workstation, leading to a steeper learning curve for those who are less familiar with virtual machine programs. It's not severe, but it is worth mentioning. #### Reasons for switching to VirtualBox The price difference was undeniable and necessary --- ### VirtualBox review - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Telecommunications - Company size: 10000+ employees - Product usage: Used monthly for less than 12 months - Reviewed: December 2020 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered I am satisfied with VirtualBox, as it has proven itself more than reliable, especially during the long sessions of troubleshooting on my Virtual Machine. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Sometimes I tend to use VirtualBox for my Lab in order to replicate some issue reported by the Customer or to check certain settings in the Software which I support, because VirtualBox has proven itself as good and reliable in this field. #### Cons I don't like the amount of space which normal lab requires for daily use, especially because I need sometimes to switch between a couple of Virtual Machines on my company's laptop, which lacks disc space. #### Reasons for switching to VirtualBox I was using VMware Workstation for some of my own projects, but after I started using VirtualBox on work, I completely switched to that Software instead. --- ### Oracle virtual box - Overall rating: 3/5 - Reviewer: Abdul Rahman M. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Computer Software - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used weekly for free trial - Reviewed: March 2021 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros It’s great we have many OS versions to install on the machine #### Cons It’s a bit slow and bot too fast . And sone problems occurs #### Reasons for switching to VirtualBox I expected it be better byt at the end I moved again to vmware --- ### A good virtualization tool - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Yohan S. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Food & Beverages - Company size: 10000+ employees - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: January 2025 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros VirtualBox is a lightweight tool that lets you run several virtual machines without consuming too many resources. #### Cons VirtualBox lacks features for managing virtual networks --- ### Real Problems No Longer Feel Real Inside a Perfectly Replicated Virtual System with VirtualBox - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Sébastien L. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Computer Software - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: March 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Thanks to VirtualBox, I have been able to test different systems under controlled conditions. I was able to quickly test the minimum requirements of specific applications by simply changing the settings affecting the virtual machine before using it. It has also allowed me to get comfortable with other operating systems that I don't use regularly and to open native applications flawlessly as opposed to trying to emulate those with an incompatible system. It has saved me many times when deploying destructive scripts for testing purposes that would otherwise have wiped out my real hard drive or infected my machine directly. I feel this is a very well built software and I would be confident in recommending its use to anyone who is looking into virtualization. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros The ability to install almost any operating system with great support for USB, ACPI and SMP without the risk of breaking the machine that is being used for virtualization is a strong advantage of VirtualBox. Apart from the fact that it is free and backed by a legendary company, one of its great features resides in the guest additions, which makes it possible to get better performance and communication with the host, such as adding drag & drop and copy/paste abilities. It also supports a wide range of hardware and has always worked very well for my testing purposes as long as enough memory and CPU can be allocated to the virtual machine without affecting the host. Because it is also possible to take snapshots of the virtual machine at any point, it is easy and convenient to test almost anything without having to reformat and waste many hours to set things up again: it suffices to go back in time to retrieve a working version of the instance. I use it mainly on Linux machines, but its great portability and cross-platform nature is an asset when it comes to deploying it on other systems. #### Cons When not used to the software, it is confusing why some functions might not be available without the guest additions. On some systems, using a desktop environment with fixed sized windows may distort the aspect ratio of the virtual machine. Instead of auto-scaling, it is then necessary to switch the window into "floating mode" to resize manually. Depending on the resources available, the virtual machine will certainly feel slower than the host, especially with no hardware acceleration. By the nature of virtualization, one needs a lot of system resources to take full advantage of both the host and the virtual machine at the same time. On the positive side, it is easy with VirtualBox to adjust the resources allocated to the virtual machine. It cannot be changed on the fly while using the virtual environment, but it is nevertheless indispensable to be able to do so otherwise. --- ### Virtualizing was never that easy - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Andrius L. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Food Production - Company size: 1001-5000 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 2 years - Reviewed: September 2022 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered I would recomend this for the peiple who need some kind of anciend hardware to run the older software they require #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros The software is free with lots of useful functions that saves your time while time is very important in your life. Creating images with the complete system and ability to send that to another user to use it makes the virtualization essential in some cases. #### Cons Sometimes the profiles software has does not let you test the mashine in real life conditions and what works in the virtual mashine may not allways work in real hardware. --- ### VirtualBox is amazing - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Computer Software - Company size: 51-200 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: February 2023 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Overall I am very happy to use VirtualBox as it is fulfilling my requirements completely. Otherwise, I have to set up two laptops which will be expensive and complex to maintain. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros I am using a couple of operating systems thru VirtualBox on my system. I have Ubuntu as host and Mint, Windows 7 as guest OS.Switching between these 2 works smoothly. The Internet works very well. We can specify RAM and hard disk size in the settings.We can configure shared folder between guest and host systems which make life very easy. #### Cons Installation is not that easy. Sometimes we have to do some tweaks based on the operating system we are using. But once the operating system is installed correctly things are very smooth. --- ### Everything you need to do software testing in a single workstation - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Francis Carolina L. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Product usage: Used other for more than 2 years - Reviewed: July 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. In the organization in which I worked some time ago, all platforms were migrating to free software. As a geographer, I had to make expedited deliveries of maps and that platform was not yet stable, with Virtualbox, I could use traditional software to respond to requests from my bosses. Currently I'm still using Virtualbox but outside the business scope. At home my family enjoys playing video games from the time of our childhood and they can only be executed in windows 98. It could not be possible to have this hobby without VirtualBox. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros What I like most is that tool is free, easy to use and functional. These characteristics is what makes software distinguish from other similar ones. I also want to highlight its functions, such as: It allows installing virtually any operating system such as Linux, Android, Mac OS X, Windows, Chrome OS, etc; unlike others in the market. It is extremely easy to create an environment for testing of all kinds. In this way we will easily obtain a test environment completely isolated from the rest of the systems. Virtual machines and virtualization allow to use a single service per virtualized server easily and simply. In this way, even if one of the virtualized servers is dropped, the other will continue to work. Finally, the fact of virtualizing servers or operating systems can mean significant savings in maintenance and energy consumption. #### Cons Directly on the software, I could not say that there is something that I do not like, it is quite efficient. The issue is, we must have a computer or workstation that is powerful, since, if we use 2 operating systems simultaneously we are using twice as many resources. In addition, it is also possible that sometimes operating systems and programs will run slower in virtual machines. This is because the virtual machines can not get an ideal performance of the hardware that we have in our team. The more powerful our computer is, the less you will notice the loss of performance. --- ### Super easy environment for beginners - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Christina A. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Information Technology and Services - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 2 years - Reviewed: February 2022 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. VBox has made it super easy for me to install kali Linux and run it on my windows OS seamlessly. I'm also running Debian, CentOs, Docker and Ubuntu on my VBox. Definitely recommend especially for Visualization and Linux beginners! #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros I like the simplicity of it. Easy to configure, and setup. Great tool for beginners who do not know too much about the Visualization platform. I am a beginner in Linux and yet setting up Linux to run in VBox was a piece of cake. Most importantly, if I make a mistake or mess anything up within VBox, it doesn't affect my computer in any way since everything I'm doing is in the sandboxed environment. I have yet to find a negative thing about VBOX. #### Cons I have yet to find any issues with VBox. --- ### Excelente para probar programas nuevos y diferentes sistemas - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Libio L. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: March 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. To test operating systems. To use software that is not available in our operating system. Create and simulate a network of servers. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 3/5 - Customer support: 3/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros It allows me to test different programs without altering my operating system. I can create multiple servers to simulate different networks and test the operation of a server before putting it into operation. I can enter with different programs without altering my operating system. can be installed in any operating system and be able to use all programs, either private or free, since you have no restrictions for use. VirtualBox supports the virtualization of the following operating systems: Microsoft Windows GNU / Linux Mac OS X OS / 2 Warp Solaris / OpenSolaris FreeBSD MS-DOS Android etc. #### Cons You need a powerful computer. We have to take into account that if we use 2 operating systems simultaneously we are using twice as many resources. Operating systems and programs will run slower in virtual machines. This is because the virtual machines can not get an ideal performance of the hardware that we have in our team. The more powerful our computer is, the loss of performance will be noticed. If we have a problem with the computer hosting the host operating system, the service may fall on the entire virtual machine. Therefore the computer that runs the virtual machine is a critical part. --- ### Best free Virtualization software for your system - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Mohamed F. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Financial Services - Company size: 201-500 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: July 2022 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Without purchasing any Licensed tool or without any hassle of trial versions or commercial versions, we can Virtualbox as which is totally free and we don't need to spend anything for running a Kali or Ubuntu machines in your host machine. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 3/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros I love 2 things when coming to this Virtualbox. 1. It is totally free and we can install and run virtual machines in MAC, windows and Linux as well. 2. It is totally user friendly. If you are looking for a good virtualization software you can simply go for it. The software is very much stable. #### Cons I am having only 1 con i.e, we may face issues with internal NAT network adapter sometimes. Which will consume some time for troubleshooting and fixing it. But other than that, everything else is perfectly fine and good. #### Reasons for switching to VirtualBox Because, VMWare is a commercial tool and Virtualbox is an Open Source tool. --- ### VirtualBox- Review - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: David J. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Education Management - Company size: 51-200 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: February 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. With VirtualBox I am solving problems like tuff installing windows 10 on my computer which I don't know if its gonna turn well for me , I just simulate it and see how is my computer reacting on it , its like I am going around all hard and complicated installations and just installing it on easy way, that's also my main benefit. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros What I like most about this software is his flexibility. You can choose it to simulate every computer software you like , from Windows (XP Vista, 7, 8, 10) to Linux and more. I would recommend it to every programmer or ethical hacker who is still learning about hacking, installation of all packages is really fast and easy. They are guiding you to every step and there is no chance you can make mistake. The simulations are very likely to original software which I found very amazing. Thank you VirtualBox! #### Cons What I least like about this software is that sometimes some simulations are very slow to install and use ,I don't know if its because of my computer or because VirtualBox system, its like I am having 25 FPS when I am on Linux Software, and internet can be very slow there, also In the beginning I couldn't find way to exit VirtualBox simulation, which I found very troubling. --- ### VirtualBox Review - Overall rating: 3/5 - Reviewer: Mo'men Y. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Telecommunications - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: February 2019 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered My personal experience with it could be both satisfactory and disappointing, honestly. On the personal side, I'd say almost flawless, but on the professional side, it's not what I'd rely on, but again, you get what you pay for! #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros VirtualBox is open-source, easy and super fast to install and start, and it's free as well. It helps you test any OS in a few steps and switch between the operating systems you're running easily and swiftly. It's not exclusive to only one operating system. #### Cons If you just want to test operating systems and not go in-depth, VM VirtualBox would be okay. However, if you'd like to use it more in-depth, you'd find a few issues. Some computers do not allow the installation of a Virtual Machine software without changing the BIOS, and this, of course, isn't something everyone can do. Some features aren't supported without installing add-ons. Also, sound drivers aren't available. It takes a while to come up and if your computer isn't good on the specs side, you might have a laggy and slow experience. Changing the size of disk storage could be an issue, but such issued were paid attention to with newer versions (5.2). If you use the virtual OS you're running as a main drive or you rely on it for professional purposes, this could be a total disaster as you'd face countless network issues that'd hold you back. However, again, to be fair, these issues would be faced only if you go deep, but if you just run virtual OS for fun, or for simple usage, you'd have nothing to worry about. --- ### Great tool for running additional environments on your workstation - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Dominic R. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Information Technology and Services - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: June 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Nice free virtual machine tool to keep my primary workstation from getting too "cluttered" #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros VB is a great little tool to spin up additional OS environments on my workstation. I use this for 2 reasons. First, to be able to spin up other operating systems to do cross-platform testing (Linux, Windows (multiple versions), ChromeOS, etc). Secondly, I use it to have separate environments for clients. We have a multitude of clients that each require different (or worse, sometimes the same) VPN tools, software, etc. When you try to install all these tools on your regular desktop, we were constantly running into conflicts (one client needed to be v5.1 to connect to the VPN and a different client needed v4.7). It just became too much clutter. So I started spinning up a different Windows (or Linux) environment for each client install their tools separately. It has worked wonders! #### Cons The only downside is related to the /way/ I use the software. Because I spin up different environments for each client, if I have to work with a couple clients simultaneously (not often, but it happens), it can be incredibly slow because my workstations resources now have to be split 2, 3 or 4 ways (each envirnment usually gets 1/3 of my RAM allocated). Running 1 at a time is perfectly fine. Running 2 is usually OK, but once I hit 3, I've pretty much maxed out my host and it can be slow. That being said, I could accommodate for that by simply installing more RAM or allocating less to each. --- ### Oracle Virtual Box Review - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: sumit k. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Computer Software - Company size: 501-1000 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: December 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. It’s a very good experience to work on Virtual Box #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros 1) It allows to create virtual machine of any OS. 2) It allows to change settings for every single virtual machine. 3) We don’t need to create servers for testing purposes as the virtual machine provides the same functionality. 4) It does not limit the user for using it. #### Cons 1) Installation process takes very time. 2) On some computers, one must allow virtualisation through bios to create Virtual Machine. 3) There is no copy and paste option in virtual machine. For that we need to open session in putty. 4) Sound Drivers are not present and even we do have full screen size for virtual machine. --- ### A sandbox where nothing can go wrong - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Information Technology and Services - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: November 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. VirtualBox is my choice when I need to test software in different OS, also it's great to give it a try to the myriad of OS out there without ruining our computer. If you are something that likes playing with fire (but safely) then VirtualBox is for you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros As a software developer and a geek by nature, it's quite common to ruin my whole workstation because I was playing with something I wasn't supposed to do. Imagine that your project is delayed because you tried to emulate a super old game on your PC, not cool. With VB I can safely play with any and multiple operative systems and install dangerous software, just for fun. It's great to be able to virtualize any Linux distro out there before really installing it on my computer, it also helps with getting used to a new OS before switching to it. VB is simple and easy to use, you can go a long way just with the default settings and it will setup your virtual machine based on the OS you pretend to install. #### Cons It's not necessarily a VB problem but about virtualization in general, I run my virtual machines on 4GB of RAM and my host machine can be really slow when running the virtual machine, it's important to know that to fully enjoy the benefits of virtualizations and run virtual machines smoothly we need a decent video card and more RAM. Besides my poor setup, VB runs incredibly well. --- ### Any OS system, anywhere! - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Pedro C. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Professional Training & Coaching - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: April 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. VirtualBox permits me to have only one computer (MAC OS), with all the software I need, without the obligation to restart every time I need to access other OS System. I can work and share work between machines (virtual and physical) without any problem! #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros For those that work with multiple software know that a Virtual Machine is a must-have software. For those that work with MAC OS, is even more important. Many of the software I use on an investigation in social sciences are made for the Windows environment. VirtualBox is a very handy and powerful tool. The fact that it's free, is even better! There are other offers on the market, with more elaborated tools. But for the price (free), VirtualBox is the key! #### Cons There are some tricks you need to handle. For example, when you work with virtual disks, with space allocated dynamically, it's easy to increase size, but it's very hard to decrease after a cleanup. It should be possible to do both things with the same effort. --- ### My experience with virtualBox - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: innocent u. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Logistics and Supply Chain - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 2 years - Reviewed: December 2022 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. I would say it's very good #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros That I can install multiple instance.I can use almost any operating system without uninstalling my favorite operating system #### Cons Honestly I didn't find any issues using it and for that I would say it was worth the time #### Reasons for switching to VirtualBox Better performance and installation ## More reviews [Next reviews](https://www.softwareadvice.com/virtual-machine/virtualbox-profile/reviews/?page=2) --- VirtualBox Reviews, Pros and Cons - 2026 Software Advice