1VMTool compared with everything else
Thirteen tools people actually shortlist when they need a virtual machine on Apple silicon, compared on the things that decide it: what a snapshot costs, which guests run, whether there is a real command line, and what you pay. Where the other tool wins, the table says so.
Desktop VM apps
1VMTool vs Parallels Desktop
The consumer-grade way to run Windows on a Mac — Coherence, one-click Windows 11 on ARM, DirectX and OpenGL.
Read the comparison
1VMTool vs VMware Fusion
The free, full-featured desktop hypervisor for Mac power users — now Broadcom-owned, still capable, awkward to obtain.
Read the comparison
1VMTool vs UTM
The free, Mac-native front end over QEMU and Apple Virtualization — run almost any architecture, at the cost of configuration.
Read the comparison
1VMTool vs Oracle VirtualBox
The cross-platform, GPL desktop hypervisor everyone already knows — now booting ARM guests on Apple silicon.
Read the comparison
1VMTool vs VirtualBuddy
A free, focused Mac app for virtualizing macOS 12 and later on Apple silicon — built for developers testing against betas.
Read the comparisonCommand-line VM tools
1VMTool vs Lima
CLI-first virtual machines on macOS — Linux, with experimental macOS guests since v2.1 — defaulting to Apple Virtualization with QEMU as the escape hatch.
Read the comparison
1VMTool vs Tart
A CLI toolset for macOS and Linux virtual machines on Apple silicon, built for CI, with OCI-pushable images and instant APFS clones.
Read the comparison
1VMTool vs Multipass
Canonical's one-command Ubuntu virtual machine, with cloud-init, on macOS, Windows and Linux.
Read the comparison
1VMTool vs Cua (Lume)
Open-source infrastructure for computer-use AI agents, whose Lume component manages macOS and Linux VMs on Apple silicon.
Read the comparison
1VMTool vs Orchard
An orchestrator that runs Tart virtual machines across a cluster of Apple silicon machines, with a REST API.
Read the comparisonContainer platforms
1VMTool vs OrbStack
The fast, Mac-only Docker Desktop replacement that also runs Linux machines — deliberately not a general hypervisor.
Read the comparison
1VMTool vs Colima
Docker and Kubernetes on macOS through a Lima virtual machine — the lightweight, free answer to Docker Desktop, now with an AI model runner.
Read the comparison
1VMTool vs Dory
A native macOS local development system — Docker, Compose, Kubernetes, Linux VMs and agent sandboxes in one app.
Read the comparisonThe honest summary
1VMTool is early. It wins on one thing decisively — a snapshot is an APFS clone, so taking and restoring one costs almost nothing regardless of disk size — and on two structurally: it ships no bundled hypervisor, and its CLI is a peer of the GUI rather than a paid tier. It loses on maturity, on breadth of guests, and on accelerated 3D, which it does not have at all.
If the tool you already use does your job — Coherence, Docker, Ubuntu in one command, macOS CI images, or x86 emulation — keep it. Switch when you want resetting a machine to be cheaper than cleaning one.
Product names and logos are trademarks of their respective owners and are shown here only to identify the products being compared. No affiliation or endorsement is implied.