If you want to run a full Windows system on an Intel Mac, Parallels Desktop is the best choice for individual and small-business users. It’s also currently the only practical choice for running Windows on Apple Silicon machines. Parallels is fast, features tight integrations between host and guest machines, and gets frequent updates that keep it compatible with the latest Windows and macOS systems. Parallels Desktop is the PCMag Editors’ Choice winner for virtualization software.
Parallels Desktop is slightly less stable and enterprise-friendly than VMware Fusion, but that app performs more slowly and doesn’t yet officially support Apple Silicon hardware. Freeware VirtualBox won’t run on an Apple Silicon Mac, either, and is too unstable for regular use. The free, experimental UTM app, based on the open-source QEMU emulation software, can run Windows on Apple Silicon, but is frustrating to set up and lacks all the conveniences built into Parallels.
How Much Does Parallels Desktop Cost?
Parallels Desktop offers Standard, Pro, and Business editions of its software. The Standard edition, which is intended for home users, costs either a one-time permanent-license fee of $99.99, or $79.99 per year for a subscription. Students can get the Standard edition for $39.99 per year. The subscription includes any upgrades to new versions of the software during the payment period, while anyone who buys a permanent license option is not eligible for free version updates. The Pro and Business editions cost $99.99 per year. You can try any version free for 14 days.
I strongly recommend going with the subscription, because the Parallels app is so deeply integrated with macOS, and because new iterations of macOS often require new versions of Parallels. If, however, you’ve already bought a one-time license to the Standard edition, you can upgrade to a Pro subscription for $49.99 per year instead of paying the full Pro version subscription price. You can also purchase a one-time upgrade to the latest, single-license version of Parallels Desktop's Standard edition for $49.99.
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The Standard version supports virtual machines with 8GB of RAM and four virtual CPUs; the Pro version upgrades those specs to 128GB of RAM and 32 CPUs. If you’re using graphics- or math-intensive Windows software, you’ll need the Pro version. A Business version, priced identically to the Pro version and with the same support for RAM and CPUs, offers centralized management and a single volume license for multiple machines. The Pro and Business versions include a kiosk-like rollback feature that makes it easy to run an emulated system without saving any changes in it when it shuts down. All versions support a snapshot feature that lets you manually roll back to an earlier version, but the kiosk-like feature is the practical and effortless choice for corporate and educational setups.
VMware Fusion is pricier than Parallels Desktop. It charges $149 for the standard Player edition and $199 for the Pro version. Upgrades to the latest version of the Player edition for current users cost $79, while upgrades for Pro users to the latest Pro version cost $99. Notably, VMware offers a free version that lets you run existing emulated systems, but not create new ones.
If price is what matters most, you can use the free VirtualBox or UTM solutions, keeping in mind that UTM, but not VirtualBox, is usable on an Apple Silicon Mac. Still, you’re better off spending money for VMware or Parallels rather than struggling with the free apps. Check out our article on how to run Windows apps on your Mac for additional free options.
What Platforms Does Parallels Desktop Support?
On an Apple Silicon Mac, Parallels lets you run the freely available and ARM-based developer beta versions of Windows 10 or Windows 11. You can also run ARM-based versions of Linux—Parallels has a menu that lets you download and install ARM-based Debian, Fedora, Kali Linux, or Ubuntu. If you’re running macOS Monterey, you can run a special version of it virtually. However, this special version doesn’t support any of the tight host-guest integration features that Parallels offers to those running macOS guest systems on Intel machines.
On a Mac with an Intel CPU, you can create virtual systems that run any Intel-based Windows or Linux versions, plus any recent Intel-based versions of macOS from your recovery partition. On these devices, the download menu includes multiple flavors of Android, Linux, and Windows.
You can also install any supported system from a disk image or DVD, as well as import an existing Windows system over a network after installing Parallels’ transfer software on the original machine. Keep in mind that you need to buy a license for any virtual Windows systems, except for developer betas.
You can’t download a version of Parallels Desktop that lets you run emulated systems on Windows or Linux platforms the way you can with VMware Fusion. That means, with Parallels, you're restricted to running your virtual machines on a Mac. VMware doesn’t yet officially support Apple Silicon devices, but you can download a public preview of an Apple-Silicon-compatible version.
For gaming and graphics-intensive apps, Parallels Desktop, like VMware Fusion, supports DirectX 11 graphics, but not DirectX 12, which brings new ray-tracing and machine-learning capabilities. VirtualBox works with DirectX up to version 9. The only way to get DirectX 12 graphics on a Mac is to install Windows via a Boot Camp partition on an Intel-based Mac. Unless you’re a serious Windows gamer or run high-powered Windows scientific and graphic apps, DirectX 11 support is likely sufficient.
Recent versions of macOS won’t let you run older 32-bit apps, but if you have an Intel Mac, then Parallels, like VMware Fusion, lets you run older macOS versions (Mojave and earlier) that support these apps on virtual machines. Our story on how to run 32-bit apps in macOS Catalina has all the details.
Getting Started With Parallels Desktop
When you install Parallels Desktop, the app walks you through the process of setting up the permissions it needs, instead of sending you to your Mac’s System Preferences to sort them out on your own. I wish more vendors took the trouble to make this process as smooth as Parallels does.
If you’re installing Parallels on an Apple Silicon–based Mac, you first need to follow the app’s instructions for downloading the preview version of Windows 11 for ARM machines. Next, you encounter the Create New menu that lets you configure a Windows system from the disk image you downloaded in the previous step, or you can choose from a few free included Linux systems. As with VMware Fusion and VirtualBox, Parallels lists all your virtual systems in a single window, which it calls the Control Center.
The easiest way to install the ARM-based preview version of Windows 11 is from a disk image. If you aren’t already a member of Microsoft’s Insider Preview program, follow the instructions that Parallels provides and then drag the disk image you download from Microsoft into Parallels’ window. Parallels then gives you a choice of configuring your system for productivity or only full-screen games. In testing, Parallels created and started the Windows guest system in less than a minute. Windows then installed itself in less than five minutes—not much slower than the process would take when installing directly on hardware.
Host and Guest Integrations
Like VMware Fusion and VirtualBox, Parallels offers tight integrations between the macOS host and the virtual guest systems that it manages. For instance, you can drag and drop files between your Mac host and your Windows or Linux guest, and, for Intel Macs only, your macOS guest system. You can also share the clipboard between the two operating systems, and, optionally, launch applications on your Windows system to open files on your host Mac and vice versa.
By default, when Windows starts up under Parallels, the folders on your Mac’s desktop also appear on your Windows desktop. The same setting is now the default in VMware Fusion. For me, this configuration is a bad idea, because I keep some Mac apps on my Mac desktop. Mac apps are technically folders (called application bundles) that the Mac displays as if they were individual files. Windows can’t handle application bundles correctly and simply displays them as folders on your desktop. You can easily mess up your Mac apps if you start exploring these folders on your Windows instance. I always turn off the option to share the desktop between my Mac and any guest system. Even if you do this, Parallels still has a convenient Mac Files shortcut on the Windows desktop that lets you access any of your Mac folders on your virtual Windows system.
Parallels, like VMware Fusion and VirtualBox, lets you run Windows in three ways: with the Windows desktop running in a window on your macOS desktop, in a full-screen mode, or via what Parallels calls Coherence mode. In Coherence mode, Parallels shows only a single Windows app on your Mac desktop in its own window and hides the rest of the Windows desktop. As I discuss in a later section, Parallels Desktop switches in and out of these modes quickly and seamlessly.
Other aspects of day-to-day computing work as expected. For example, the same printers installed on your Mac appear in the print dialog in your Windows apps. When you attach a USB peripheral, a clear menu pops up to let you choose whether the device will be accessible in your Windows or Mac systems. You can send Windows-only keystrokes like Break or PrintScreen via a menu on your Mac. All these features are also available in VMware Fusion (for Intel Macs only), but Parallels does a better job of implementing them, with more lucid dialogs and better-organized menus.
Additional Features and Customizations
One major advantage of Parallels Desktop for Pro subscribers is the ability to start a virtual machine in Rollback mode. In this mode, you can run a guest Windows, Mac, or Linux system like a kiosk. In other words, every time you reboot the machine, it returns to its original state. It's a useful capability for those who like to experiment with software without making any permanent changes to the system. All the other emulation apps support snapshots, which let you preserve the current state of a guest system, but Parallels is the only one with this invaluable kiosk-style mode.
Parallels Desktop, by default, muscles into your Mac with features that you may or may not find convenient. For example, drives on your emulated system appear in the Finder’s sidebar and applications that you run in Windows show up on the dock. You can bring all these integration features under control, but you have to spend some time exploring Parallel’s menus to get everything to work the way you want.
One other minor annoyance is that the app pops up dialogs inviting you to buy a utility suite called Parallels Toolbox. It's a set of miscellaneous tools for reading barcodes, taking screen captures, and more, and it has nothing to do with virtualization and doesn’t add anything to the virtualization experience. You can turn off the advertising dialogs, but you can’t remove the Install Parallels Toolbox menu item.
Speed and Performance
The most impressive aspect of Parallels Desktop is its speed. On an M1-based MacBook Pro, Windows 11 booted to the desktop in 9 seconds and needed 2 seconds to resume the system after I had suspended it. That's spectacularly fast. The freeware UTM, on the same machine, booted Windows 11 in 12 seconds, which is almost as fast, but UTM doesn’t offer Parallels’ deep integration features.
On an older Intel-based MacBook Pro, Windows 11 booted to the desktop in 34 seconds, and needed 4 seconds to resume. On the same Intel machine, VMware Fusion took 43 seconds to boot Windows 11 to the desktop and 15 seconds to resume from a suspended state. VirtualBox started Windows 11 in 38 seconds, but I found its performance unusably slow once I reached the desktop.
Parallels’ various display modes also worked more quickly and fluidly than competitors’ similar modes. For example, when I ran a Windows app in Parallel’s Coherence mode, I moved its window around my Mac desktop without the choppiness and slow responses that I got with rival emulators. When I switched in and out of Coherence mode, Parallels got the job done smoothly and without visual distraction. VMware Fusion and VirtualBox switched between modes more slowly and with distracting partial windows appearing and disappearing on screen.
The price that Parallels pays for its speed may be its reliability. The current version is a lot more stable than previous ones, but even with the new version, I experienced one lockup while Parallels was updating its host-guest integration tools. I had to shut down the app from my Mac’s Force Quit menu. That experience won’t stop me from using Parallels when I need to run Windows apps, but it has made me cautious about backing up often from those apps. By contrast, I’ve never experienced a lockup with VMware Fusion. VirtualBox, however, is unreliable, with frequent crashes during setup.
Seamless Virtualization Software for Mac Users
Parallels Desktop is the obvious first choice for all home and small office users who want to run Windows on an Apple Silicon- or Intel-based Mac. It’s terrifically fast, smooth, and, despite minor glitches, reliable. Parallels Desktop remains our Editors' Choice winner for emulation software.
VMware Fusion may be a better choice for large corporations and educational sites that need absolute reliability and the option to run virtual machines on Windows and Linux platforms, in addition to Macs.
Parallels Desktop is the best and fastest emulation software for running Windows, Linux, and even older versions of macOS on Intel-based Macs. If you need to run Windows on an Apple Silicon machine, it's the only practical option.
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