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Hyper-V vs QEMU: catalog facts
Hyper-V	QEMU
Free Included at no extra cost in Windows Pro, Enterprise and Windows Server editions.	Free Free and open source, with no paid edition.
Windows	Windows, macOS, Linux, Command line
Built into Windows with nothing extra to buy Type-1 hypervisor with near-native performance	Emulates whole machines across processor architectures, not just same-architecture VMs Near native performance when paired with KVM or Xen
Not available on Windows Home editions Windows only	Raw QEMU is a command line tool with a large and unfriendly option surface Cross-architecture emulation is far slower than virtualisation on matching hardware
Operating system	Downloadable app
Closed source	Open source
License not stated	License: GPL-2.0
No account needed	No account needed
Works offline	Works offline
Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 23, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 20, 2026

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