Broadcom closed its $69 billion acquisition of VMware in November 2023, ended perpetual licences, and moved customers onto subscription bundles. AT&T told a New York court it faced a proposed 1,050% increase in its VMware bill. Two years on, the deadline that matters is October 2027, when general support ends for vSphere 8, the last version sold with perpetual licences.
Most teams are not leaving in one move. A CloudBolt survey of 302 IT leaders, published in February 2026, found 86% actively reducing their VMware footprint and only 4% fully off it. This guide covers where those workloads are going, what each option is built for, and where each falls short.
The short answer
Proxmox VE is the most common VMware alternative: free, open source, KVM underneath, with a built-in importer for ESXi virtual machines. XCP-ng is the closest match to the vSphere and vCenter experience. Nutanix AHV suits enterprises that want a turnkey commercial platform. Hyper-V and Azure Local suit Microsoft shops. OpenShift Virtualization and Harvester run VMs on Kubernetes. OpenStack suits large teams building a full private cloud. Spinifex fits a different case: teams whose tooling is built on AWS and want the AWS APIs on the hardware they are migrating to.
| Platform | Licence | What it is | Who it suits | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Proxmox VE | AGPL-3.0, optional paid support | KVM and LXC with a web console, clustering and backups | Small and mid-sized teams, MSPs, Linux-savvy admins | You build the self-service and automation layer yourself |
| XCP-ng | GPLv2, with Xen Orchestra under AGPL-3.0 | Xen hypervisor plus a vCenter-style management console | Teams that want the vSphere operating model without the bill | Disks over 2 TB need extra care on the older storage format |
| Nutanix AHV | Commercial, free Community Edition | Hyperconverged compute, storage and networking | Enterprises that want one vendor and a turnkey platform | You trade one commercial vendor for another |
| Hyper-V and Azure Local | Windows Server and Azure licensing | Microsoft's hypervisor, with Azure Local as its HCI edition | Organisations already standardised on Microsoft | Azure Local is managed through Azure Arc |
| OpenShift Virtualization | Red Hat subscription | VMs running alongside containers on Kubernetes (KubeVirt) | Teams moving to Kubernetes as their platform | You run OpenShift to run your VMs |
| Harvester | Apache-2.0, SUSE support available | Open source HCI on KubeVirt and Longhorn storage | Teams that want free HCI with Kubernetes underneath | A younger project with a smaller ecosystem |
| OpenStack | Apache-2.0 | A modular private cloud: compute, networking, storage, identity | Large organisations with a dedicated platform team | Operational weight: a dozen services to run and upgrade |
| Spinifex | AGPL-3.0 | An AWS-compatible cloud (EC2, S3, VPC, IAM, EKS) on KVM | Teams whose automation is built on AWS tooling | No VMware VM import yet; workloads are rebuilt from images |
Why teams are leaving VMware
The price shock is real, but uneven. CloudBolt's survey found 57% of respondents had seen increases above 25%, while far fewer saw their bills double. The bigger driver is uncertainty: 88% said concern about future increases is already shaping their decisions, and more than half had changed their VMware strategy at least twice since the acquisition.
The calendar adds pressure. vSphere 8 reaches end of general support in October 2027, and vSphere 9 ships only inside Broadcom's subscription bundles. For teams on vSphere Standard or Enterprise Plus, the next step is a new contract rather than an upgrade, which makes now the natural point to evaluate everything else.
Proxmox VE
Proxmox VE is the first name in almost every VMware migration thread. It runs KVM virtual machines and LXC containers on the same x86 servers VMware ran on, manages them through a web console, and adds clustering, live migration, Ceph or ZFS storage and built-in backups. It is AGPL-3.0, with paid support subscriptions for teams that want them.
Proxmox VE 8.2, released in April 2024, added an import wizard that connects to an ESXi host and brings virtual machines across with most of their configuration mapped. That single feature removed the largest practical obstacle to leaving VMware.
What Proxmox does not give you is a cloud layer: self-service APIs, tenant isolation and identity are yours to build. We compare it with Spinifex in more depth in Proxmox vs Spinifex.
XCP-ng
XCP-ng started in 2018 as a community fork of Citrix XenServer and is developed by Vates in France. Paired with Xen Orchestra, its management console, it is the alternative that feels most like running vSphere with vCenter. The hypervisor is GPLv2, Xen Orchestra is AGPL-3.0 when built from source, and Vates sells a supported bundle priced per host with no CPU or memory limits.
Xen Orchestra includes a VMware-to-Vates migration tool that streams virtual machines directly from an ESXi host. Check disk sizes before you start: on the older storage format, disks over 2 TB cannot migrate automatically.
Nutanix AHV
Nutanix sells hyperconverged infrastructure with its own KVM-based hypervisor, AHV, and has courted VMware customers directly since the acquisition. Nutanix Move, a free migration tool, replicates virtual machines from ESXi to AHV with a short cutover per VM, and a free Community Edition lets you test on up to four nodes.
Nutanix is the most turnkey option on this list, and it is a commercial platform. For teams leaving VMware because of a vendor's pricing power, that trade deserves a hard look at contract terms.
Hyper-V and Azure Local
For organisations already licensed for Windows Server, Hyper-V is the shortest path. Azure Local, renamed from Azure Stack HCI in late 2024, is Microsoft's hyperconverged edition: Hyper-V and Storage Spaces Direct on validated hardware, managed through Azure Arc.
It fits teams whose identity, management and skills are already Microsoft. It ties your on-premise estate more closely to Azure, which is a benefit for some teams and the reason others rule it out.
OpenShift Virtualization
OpenShift Virtualization runs virtual machines as Kubernetes workloads through KubeVirt, side by side with containers. Red Hat's Migration Toolkit for Virtualization connects to vCenter, maps datastores and networks, and moves VMs in planned waves.
This is the right move for teams that already plan to make Kubernetes their platform. For teams that only want to keep running VMs, it adds a container platform they have to learn and operate first.
Harvester
Harvester is SUSE's open source answer to the same idea: hyperconverged infrastructure built on KubeVirt for VMs and Longhorn for storage, installed directly on bare metal and licensed Apache-2.0. Version 1.9 shipped in September 2026.
It is free and Kubernetes-native, and it is younger than everything else on this list apart from Spinifex, so run your own failure tests before trusting it with production.
OpenStack
OpenStack builds a full private cloud out of separate services for compute, networking, block storage, images and identity. It runs some of the largest private clouds in the world and gives you multi-tenant, self-service infrastructure that a hypervisor alone does not.
The cost is operational. OpenStack rewards organisations with a platform team to run and upgrade it, and is heavy for a team replacing a few vSphere clusters. We cover the trade-offs in OpenStack vs Spinifex.
Spinifex
Spinifex is our project, and it answers a different question from the rest of this list. Every other option replaces the hypervisor. Spinifex replaces the cloud API.
It runs on standard Linux servers and serves AWS-compatible EC2, EBS, S3, VPC, IAM, EKS, ECS and ECR APIs, with KVM virtual machines, GPU passthrough and multi-node clusters underneath. Teams that run Terraform, the AWS CLI and AWS SDKs keep them and change the endpoint. It is AGPL-3.0, with no core minimums or subscription floor, and it runs fully air-gapped.
Spinifex is not a drop-in vSphere replacement. It does not import VMware virtual machines today, so workloads come across as images built for the new platform rather than as converted VMDKs. If your goal is to move hundreds of existing VMs unchanged, start with Proxmox, XCP-ng or Nutanix. If your teams already build infrastructure the AWS way, Spinifex brings that model to the hardware you are keeping.
How to choose
Start with what you have to move. Large estates of existing VMs point to a platform with a proven importer: Proxmox, XCP-ng, Nutanix or OpenShift Virtualization. Microsoft-standardised organisations get the shortest path from Hyper-V. Teams treating the VMware exit as the moment to build a self-service private cloud should compare OpenStack with Spinifex, and the deciding question there is whether your automation already speaks the AWS API.
To try Spinifex before committing hardware, sign up for the free sandbox. The source is on GitHub, and the documentation, including the multi-node install guide, is at docs.mulgadc.com.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best alternative to VMware?
Proxmox VE is the most common choice: it is free, open source, runs KVM on the same servers, and imports ESXi virtual machines with a built-in wizard. XCP-ng is the closest match to the vSphere and vCenter experience, Nutanix AHV suits enterprises that want a turnkey commercial platform, and Hyper-V suits organisations already standardised on Microsoft.
Is there a free alternative to VMware?
Yes. Proxmox VE (AGPL-3.0), XCP-ng with Xen Orchestra built from source, Harvester (Apache-2.0), OpenStack (Apache-2.0) and Spinifex (AGPL-3.0) are all free to run, with paid support available for most of them. Nutanix offers a free Community Edition for testing on up to four nodes.
How do I migrate virtual machines off VMware?
Use the target platform's importer. Proxmox VE has an ESXi import wizard, Xen Orchestra has a VMware-to-Vates migration tool for XCP-ng, Nutanix Move replicates VMs from ESXi to AHV, and Red Hat's Migration Toolkit for Virtualization moves VMs from vCenter to OpenShift Virtualization.
When does vSphere 8 support end?
General support for vSphere 8 ends in October 2027. vSphere 8 is the last version sold with perpetual licences, and vSphere 9 is available only inside Broadcom's subscription bundles, so teams on vSphere Standard or Enterprise Plus face a new contract rather than an upgrade.
Are companies actually leaving VMware?
Gradually. A CloudBolt survey of 302 IT leaders published in February 2026 found 86% actively reducing their VMware footprint, but only 4% had moved off it completely. Most are moving workloads in phases while they evaluate alternatives.
Can Spinifex run my existing VMware virtual machines?
Not directly. Spinifex does not import VMware virtual machines today, so workloads are rebuilt as images for the new platform. It fits teams whose infrastructure is automated with AWS tooling such as Terraform and the AWS CLI, and who want those AWS APIs on hardware they own.
