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 Parallels versus Fusion macOS guests

Barry Newberger's profile image
Barry Newberger posted Mar 26, 2025 02:53 PM

I am looking for a comparison of macOS guests on Parallels versus VMWare Fusion. I currently am using Parallels 16 to run a macOS guest (Sierra, at the moment). I am not a gamer and my use case is running legacy applications for photography post processing. My perception from using Parallels 16 is that Parallels support for macOS guests is not as robust as that for Windows. Would like to hear from anyone with experience with these two virtualization options.

Technogeezer's profile image
External Moderator Technogeezer

Personal opinions follow.

On Apple Silicon (M-series) Macs, Fusion doesn’t support MacOS VMs. Parallels and UTM will both run macOS Monterey or later in a VM with almost identical functionality. (Not surprising siince they both use Apple’s high level virtualization framework to virtualize macOS). I’d choose UTM if I needed macOS VMs over Parallels because UTM is free from their web site or $9.99 USD from the Mac App Store. Much less than Parallels.

Both Parallels and UTM have limitations in feature support compared to Windows and Linux  These are limitations imposed by the Apple frameworks that both products use. A couple of biggies include USB device redirection and drag/drop between host and guest. Most other things (including folder sharing, graphics acceleration) work fine  

Also, no version of macOS prior to Monterey can be virtualized on Apple Silicon as they aren’t compiled to run on anything but Intel Macs.

On Intel Macs, Fusion can virtualize macOS. But support is somewhat spotty for Metal/3D graphics support which many applications expect. The default virtual machine configuration doesn’t turn Metal support on by default - manual configuration file editing is required. Parallels may have an edge here over Fusion in their support for macOS VMs.