Cloud Hypervisor vs crosvm
Cloud Hypervisor
cloudhypervisor.org
crosvm
chromium.googlesource.comSide by side
| Figure | Cloud Hypervisor | crosvm |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Android | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Hypervisor Software | 8.6 (#3) | 9.0 (#1) |
| Security | The project cites Rust implementation and minimal emulated devices as ways to avoid common security issues. | Each virtual device runs in its own Minijail sandbox by default, with syscall security policies to restrict unwanted system calls. |
| Support | The project directs users to GitHub discussions or Slack for help, GitHub issues for bug reports, and a mailing list for broader discussions. | The project points users to a public issue tracker and Matrix chat, and provides announcements and a developer mailing list. |
| What it does | Cloud Hypervisor is an open-source Virtual Machine Monitor written in Rust for modern cloud workloads, with minimal hardware emulation. | crosvm is a hosted, type-2 virtual machine monitor that runs guest operating systems through a host hypervisor. |
Plans
In their own words
Cloud Hypervisor
Cloud Hypervisor is a free, open-source virtual machine monitor written in Rust for modern cloud workloads. It runs modern Linux and Windows guests on Linux hosts with x86-64 or AArch64 architectures, using minimal hardware emulation. Operators can manage VM lifecycles through a REST API or command-line interface, with an optional D-Bus API. It supports snapshots, nested virtualization, paravirtualized devices, physical device passthrough, and live migration between hosts without interrupting VMs. Migration data can be encrypted using mutual TLS. The maker says direct kernel boot reaches userspace in less than 100 ms. The project is supported by Kata Containers for running secure containerized workloads and is governed openly as part of the Linux Foundation. It has no commercial plan or usage limits stated. Linux hosts need kernel 4.11 or later for required KVM functionality; kernel 5.6 is recommended for adequate performance. Packages for some popular Linux distributions are available through the Open Build Service. For help, the project points users to GitHub discussions or Slack, with GitHub issues for bug reports and a mailing list for broader discussion.
crosvm
crosvm is a free, open-source virtual machine monitor written in Rust for running Linux and Android guest systems in sandboxed environments. Developed for ChromeOS, it is also used in TerminalApp on Android, Cuttlefish, and Windows. Each virtual device runs in its own Minijail sandbox by default, with syscall policies, namespaces, seccomp filters, and dropped capabilities contributing to isolation. Supported CPU architectures are x86_64, aarch64, and riscv64. The project lists KVM, Gunyah, GenieZone, and Halla for Linux or Android, and WHPX and HAXM for Windows. Virtio devices cover networking, storage, GPU, audio, filesystems, console, RNG, ballooning, vsock, TPM, and video. Block storage supports raw, qcow2, zstd, and Android sparse formats. Linux hosts need kernel 4.14 or newer with KVM support; some devices have additional host requirements. The project documents obtaining crosvm from its source repository and building it with Cargo. SCSI, video, shared host directories via virtio-pmem, and snapshotting are marked experimental or highly experimental.