Back in November 2024, VMware Fusion became free for personal use. It was a big shocker at the time, especially when the end days of Intel Macs didn’t seem to be dated yet. VMware on x86 machines had been a competitive product against Parallels, both paid solutions to running Windows on Macs, until 4 years passed since the first Apple Silicon device launch in 2020. I won’t pretend to know what motivated Broadcom, VMware’s parent company, to be so generous; but for a product that hasn’t seen official support of new Apple hardware for 4 years, I can see how dropping it was an enticing option.

On Parallels’ side of Business, calling it peachy is an understatement. Parallels has become the official method of running Windows on Apple Silicon, approved by Microsoft, as of 2023. From my experience, most of features I have expected from x86 Parallels still work on Apple Silicon. The only downside, if we were to call it that, is its price tag: starting at $64.99 license, or $77.99 per year subscription. The Standard tier, the standalone license, is severely limited with the amount of RAM and CPU a user can allocate: 8 GB of RAM and 4 vCPU. It’s effectively $78 per year or nothing.

The free version of VMware Fusion hasn’t even finished supporting all of pre-existing x86 version of features yet. If I were to pick the most-missed feature from x86 is the ability to share folders. It is technically possible to do it by creating a network folder between the macOS and Windows. The only problem I had with that approach is a lot of the apps I use that are exclusively available only on Windows, either prohibit users from sharing the folder or simply don’t function at all in network drives. Of course, it’s only a minor issue relative to the existing performance issues I had experienced on VMware.

I believe the practical decision really boils down to where will you be using virtualized Windows for. For light uses, standalone license of Parallels will be a good choice. From what I can gather, standalone license still works after a year — there may be no official support of the purchased version, but it may last well over 2 or 3 years. Whereas any demanding jobs, Pro tier is a must, and I simply cannot recommend VMware at this stage. And this is where the tough question for the free VMware Fusion comes up. Is it any better than $64.99 Parallels license?