--- title: QEMU Reviews meta\_title: 'QEMU Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta\_description: Filter 29 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how QEMU works for a business like yours. aggregate\_rating: rating\_value: 4.3 review\_count: 29 scale: '5' date\_modified: '2026-08-09' parent\_category: name: IT Infrastructure url: https://www.g2.com/categories/it-infrastructure --- # QEMU Reviews & Product Details QEMU is a generic and open source machine emulator and virtualizer. * * * Seller [Fabrice Bellard](https://www.g2.com/sellers/fabrice-bellard) Discussions [QEMU Community](https://www.g2.com/products/qemu/discuss) Solution Type Best-of-Breed Overview by Georg Drobny (Senior Cloud Solution Architect bei Microsoft) Show More ## Value at a Glance Averages based on real user reviews. ### Perceived Cost $$$$$ [ View More Pricing Information ](https://www.g2.com/products/qemu/pricing) ## Top-Rated Alternatives [ ![Parallels Desktop for Mac](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Parallels Desktop for Mac") Parallels Desktop for Mac 4.3/5(59) ](https://www.g2.com/products/parallels-desktop-for-mac/reviews) [ ![TeamViewer](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "TeamViewer") TeamViewer 4.5/5(4,151) ](https://www.g2.com/products/teamviewer/reviews) [ ![Crossover](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Crossover") Crossover 3.7/5(21) ](https://www.g2.com/products/crossover/reviews) [ View All Alternatives ](https://www.g2.com/products/qemu/competitors/alternatives) ## User Insights Average based on 29 real user reviews. Perceived Cost $$$$$ [Log in to unlock pricing and user insights](/login) ![Lucas R.](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Lucas R.") LR Lucas R. Chief Technology Officer Enterprise (\> 1000 emp.) 1/14/2021 "Powerful, extensible, emulator for virtualized workloads" 5/5 What do you like best about QEMU? QEMU runs on so many architectures and platforms, and it can be configured to run with minimal resources. This makes it perfect for embedding in hardware appliances with constrained resources. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about QEMU? With all of the many supported platforms and features, there is a bit of a learning curve. QEMU can do anything...if you can figure out how to do it. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is QEMU solving and how is that benefiting you? I've used QEMU for local operating system development on workstations, running x86 software on mobile phones, and as a runtime for virtual appliances running on the edge and in the cloud. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More 1/14/2022 Current UserValidated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite ![Rajnesh K.](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Rajnesh K.") RK Rajnesh K. Software Engineer II Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) 1/12/2021 "A very handy tool when it comes to emulation and development before sillicon is ready." 5/5 What do you like best about QEMU? best this is its open-source, and quite well maintained. Quite versatile support for different hardware emulation and one can add support for their own hardware quite easily. As its also used by virtualization solutions, it needs to fulfill different use cases which has helped in the overall evolution of the QEMU's design. One more good thing is the community is quite active. In case if you find a bug and send a patch for it, they will give it a nice review and will actively work on it so that it gets submitted in time. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about QEMU? Not much to be honest. Documentation for getting started with QEMU can be sometimes a bit hard to move around. Its not because there is some problem with it, its mainly because of the rich feature set and tons of options. Finding the ones that you care about can be tricky sometimes. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Recommendations to others considering QEMU: I would suggest to create a simple guide yourself of the options you need and their descriptions along with some example commands to run it. It comes handy while doing context switches. Specially when you are not in touch with the work for more than 2-3 weeks. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is QEMU solving and how is that benefiting you? Once I used it to port our ARM hypervisor on RISC-V architecture. Even though the hypervisor extension for RISC-V is not released yet, but because its in the final stages, someone added QEMU support for it. So basically now we have a RISC-V hypervisor ready before even any chip is launched with that support. In short it allowed us to get ahead by almost 1.5-2 years in the market. I also one used it to port an RTOS on RISC-V architecture. Boards are quite expensive when they are released initially. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Current UserValidated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite ![hafiz b.](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "hafiz b.") HB hafiz b. Technical Lead Enterprise (\> 1000 emp.) 8/22/2020 Business partner of the seller or seller's competitor, not included in G2 scores. "Have experience to use QEMU for Arm/AArch64/PowerPC/MIPS architecture user mode and system mode" 4/5 What do you like best about QEMU? It has support for almost all architecture, almost complete machine virtualization with system mode QEMU. Very easy to configurable and its development community is very responsive. You can test your first bare metal support and Linux BSP on QEMU first without having actual hardware. QEMU also provide GDB stubs in order to debug the kernel and application workflow. It has various network option to configure with machine, for example User network which is minimal network support inside the QEMU system mode and QEMU bridge network support for real time networking. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about QEMU? Not a better documentation for its command line options usage and sometime user need to go to source code to better understanding the options usage. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Recommendations to others considering QEMU: QEMU has embedded board support with very easy to configurable and usage, Vast architecture and processor support for each architecture. You can test you bare metal and RTOS application workflow on System mode QEMU. You can boot Linux service stick image on QEMU System Mode and application workflow on User mode QEMU. It is easy to add new embedded board support, as it is open source project, so you can do development and submitted a bug to open community , iIn fact QEMU open community is very responsive. QEMU is a great tool for machine virtualization. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is QEMU solving and how is that benefiting you? I added the support of RTOS virtualization for ARM and AArch64 embedded sabrelite and Xilinx zcu102 board. It is very easy to test basic embedded bare metal support without any hard ware. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Current UserValidated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite ![Aleksandar P.](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Aleksandar P.") AP Aleksandar P. Senior Software Engineer Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 1/16/2021 Business partner of the seller or seller's competitor, not included in G2 scores. "QEMU: A next-level virtualisation" 5/5 What do you like best about QEMU? QEMU has hardware-assisted virtualization. Can emulate many architectures. Extremely fast, near real-time. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about QEMU? Difficult to use. Windows support is incomplete and limited. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Recommendations to others considering QEMU: If you're looking for a way to virtualize and run almost any software/OS around, QEMU is the answer. Beside extensive hardware emulation, QEMU supports extensive CPU architecture emulation. This makes QEMU able to run nearly anything, from simple OS to advanced multi-machine infrastructure. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is QEMU solving and how is that benefiting you? QEMU can run nearly any software, thanks to extensive architecture emulation support. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Current UserValidated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite AN Adhitya N. Software Engineer Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) 1/26/2021 "QEMU is a game changer" 5/5 What do you like best about QEMU? The best part about QEMU is it's a user friendly software that allows us to run a different OS just like another application we use in our day to day life. It runs independently. The upsides of QEMU is its virtual hardware emulation. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about QEMU? The software is a bit slow on a downside, may be it is related to the emulation being performed while running in the background which increases heat on the PC Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is QEMU solving and how is that benefiting you? We use ARM based architecture OS and I personally like to use MATLAB to design various circuits. Since the PC have 32 GB RAM, the processing would be more easy and smooth. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Validated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite ![Hardik D.](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Hardik D.") HD Hardik D. Lead/Developer : Software Systems - R & D - Rail Automation Enterprise (\> 1000 emp.) 8/26/2020 "HD - QEMU as Hardware Emulator for Target Pre-integration" 4/5 What do you like best about QEMU? - Possibility for emulation and target options - Emulation of target processor and execution capabilities. - Possibility of creating multiple target devices for a virtualization scenario - Lightweight stack compared to other emulation options. - Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about QEMU? - Terminal emulations get slower - The options for inclusion/connecting with popular tools. - Learning curve on setup of qemu as emulator - Can't get reliable performance (or even timing) test results via Qemu emulation One recommendation would be to improve Frequently asked Questions and documentations or atleast needs to improve Search forum outreach for unanswered questions. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Recommendations to others considering QEMU: Plan your high level designs for jumping in. Choice of targets do become crucial, also consider the fallback options on the execution of tests that performance and timing dependent. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is QEMU solving and how is that benefiting you? - We used Qemu for Emulation of hardware devices. With Qemu emulation we had Minimal dependency for User on actual hardware. Thus, Optimized cost of execution and reduced time delay for target validation or issue debugging. - We also arranged pre-integration hardware tests with multiple target devices emulated via Qemu suite for a virtualization scenario of build integration and tests. That helped us in achieving test and validation for all scenarios except for the timing and performance analysis scenario. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Validated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite ![Sharabesh J.](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Sharabesh J.") SJ Sharabesh J. LEAP Associate Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 1/16/2021 "An efficient software for emulating various architectures of processor" 5/5 What do you like best about QEMU? The variety of architectures and possible emulation that this tool can provide Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about QEMU? There were not many blogs/websites to get to know more about this emulator. And it would be great if this is available as cloud service. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is QEMU solving and how is that benefiting you? We worked on integrating the processor emulation with the existing model simulator tool during my time in Mirabilis Design Inc, Chennai We also worked on streaming the process data into python application for analytics. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Validated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite ![Verified User in Computer Software](/assets/icons/anonymous-avatar-purple-4ae1032bdb50ee5682003170c8184aee790d25958bd397abbd384ba52c596a7b.svg "Verified User in Computer Software") UC Verified User in Computer Software Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 1/21/2021 "QEMU The Saviour" 4/5 What do you like best about QEMU? As QEMU facilitates you to abstract your own hardware device, It is very useful to create your own device, abstract all the device-level functionality, and host system driver interaction without the actual hardware device. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about QEMU? As the complexity of the device increases (Handling interrupts). It makes the QEMU bit slower than other Virtual machines Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is QEMU solving and how is that benefiting you? I was creating my own character device in order to understand the user system call, host-driver, and hardware interaction. Later I added Interrupt handling to my device to understand how interrupts are raised and processed at the device-level. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Validated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite ![Sai Sri Anjana Kumar Raja G.](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Sai Sri Anjana Kumar Raja G.") SG Sai Sri Anjana Kumar Raja G. E Enterprise (\> 1000 emp.) 1/16/2021 Business partner of the seller or seller's competitor, not included in G2 scores. "Best emulator I have ever used" 4.5/5 What do you like best about QEMU? Full system emulation for quick use. Specially in Android studio. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about QEMU? Nothing in specific right now. Stops in middle some times but can be resolved by a restart. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is QEMU solving and how is that benefiting you? Android emulation for testing my android apps. And running my C code on different architectures. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Validated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite ![Kumar G.](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Kumar G.") KG Kumar G. Embedded Software Engineer 2 Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) 1/20/2021 "Best for testing on multiple platform" 4.5/5 What do you like best about QEMU? Easy to launch can be used easily in scripts and also provides customization. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about QEMU? Doesn't provide a clear error when it terminates or stops in middle. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is QEMU solving and how is that benefiting you? Testing my c code on different platforms Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Validated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite ##### Pricing Pricing details for this product isn’t currently available. Visit the vendor’s website to learn more. 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