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bhyve vs SmartOS: catalog facts
bhyve	SmartOS
Free Free, included with FreeBSD.	Free The SmartOS ISO is free and open source; Triton offers paid private and hosted cloud…
Self-hosted, Command line	Self-hosted
Included with FreeBSD, nothing extra to install Also available on illumos	Runs zones and KVM or bhyve VMs on the same host ZFS and DTrace built in
Only runs on FreeBSD and illumos hosts Managed from the command line unless paired with a front end	Illumos base is less familiar than Linux Cloud management features require Triton on top
Operating system	Operating system
Open source	Open source
License not stated	License not stated
No account needed	No account needed
Works offline	Not stated if it works offline
Official website Full listing and sources Checked October 1, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 23, 2026

Catalog facts only. Anything “not stated” is unconfirmed. Check full listings for details.