Looking for a VirtualBuddy alternative
Be careful with this one. VirtualBuddy is free and genuinely good at macOS guests, so the only good reasons to move are needing another guest type or needing snapshots.
First: do not switch if this is you
You test your app against macOS betas. VirtualBuddy picks a macOS version from a list, downloads the restore image and installs it, which is the shortest path to a throwaway macOS that exists. It is free, it is focused, and for that job it is genuinely excellent — this is the most honest 'stay put' on the list.
1VMTool is an early product. It is deliberately narrower than VirtualBuddy, and a narrower tool is only an upgrade when the part it does well is the part you need.
What frustrates people about VirtualBuddy
- No Windows guests at all. It is a macOS-first tool and does not pretend otherwise.
- No command line to speak of. Automating a fleet or wiring a VM into CI is not what it is for.
- Snapshots are not the product. There is no branching tree, no rollback mode, no per-node disk accounting.
- Installing a newer macOS beta on an older host still needs device support packages from Apple, which is an Xcode-download errand rather than something the app can solve.
What you gain by moving
- You need Windows on ARM as well as macOS and Linux, from one app.
- You want snapshots and rollback as first-class features rather than absent ones.
- You want a CLI that is a peer of the GUI so machines can be scripted.
- You want host metering and per-guest limits stated before you create anything.
How they actually differ
| 1VMTool | VirtualBuddy | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | One-time purchase. | Free and open source. |
| macOS guests | Supported, with snapshots. | The whole point, and very well done — version picker plus automatic restore-image download. |
| Snapshot mechanism | APFS clone of the disk bundle. Take and restore in well under a millisecond, independent of disk size. | Not a first-class feature. |
| Windows guests | Experimental, on the first-party engine. | None. |
| Command line | 1vm covers every GUI action. | Not a scripting-oriented tool. |
| Linux guests | Supported on both engines. | Some ARM distributions. |
| Guest integration | Clipboard, shared folders, Mac-shortcut translation. | A guest app gives clipboard and automatic shared-folder mounting. |
| Open source | Closed source. | BSD-2-Clause. |
Highlighted cells mark the stronger side of each row. Competitor details checked September 2026 against vendor documentation — pricing and features move, so verify anything decision-critical at the source.
Moving across
- Keep VirtualBuddy installed. There is no importer — machine formats do not transfer — so treat this as running both for a while rather than a migration.
- Recreate one machine you actually use in 1VMTool and work in it for a week. One real machine tells you more than a checklist.
- Take a safe point as soon as it is set up, then deliberately break something and restore it. That loop is the reason to switch; test it early.
- Only then decide. If the loop did not change how you work, the honest answer is to stay on VirtualBuddy.
Frequently asked questions
VirtualBuddy is free and does macOS guests — why pay for 1VMTool?
If macOS beta testing is your whole use case, you probably should not. VirtualBuddy is free, focused and good at it. 1VMTool is worth it when you also need Windows or Linux from the same app, or when you want snapshots and rollback to be cheap enough that you stop deciding whether to take one.
Can VirtualBuddy run Windows?
No. It virtualizes macOS 12 and later plus some ARM Linux distributions. For Windows on ARM you need Parallels, Fusion, UTM, VirtualBox or 1VMTool's engine.
Does VirtualBuddy have snapshots?
Not as a first-class feature with a branching tree and restore. If your workflow is break-it-then-roll-back rather than install-once, that is the practical difference between the two.
See whether the reset loop changes anything
Every screen states its limits before you commit, so it does not take long to find out.