Earlier, VMware's Workstation Pro cost $199 for a new license, and Fusion Pro was priced at $149. Now, anyone can download and use the fully-featured Pro versions at no cost for personal, non-commercial use. A free personal use license can be obtained by registering for a VMware account.
However, commercial organisations still require paid licenses to use Workstation Pro and Fusion Pro. For businesses, Workstation Pro is licensed at $199 per device and Fusion Pro costs $199 per user. Support and subscription options are also available for enterprises.
VMware Workstation Pro is a hosted hypervisor that runs on top of an existing Windows or Linux operating system, allowing users to create and run multiple virtual machines on the same physical computer, while VMware Fusion Pro enables running Windows and Linux virtual machines on Mac computers.
This makes it a perfect choice for developers and computer students to deploy their virtual machines with the least complexity possible.
Furthermore, VMware is retiring the earlier versions of VMware Workstation and VMware Fusion. For a seamless transition to the latest version, they've mentioned detailed steps for existing users on how to upgrade to the pro variants.
They also shared a table to explain migration in simple terms:
While attempting to download the Workstation Pro and Fusion Pro free for personal use, make sure to select the Personal variants; otherwise, it will throw an error saying Not Entitled.
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