Multipass
Shares rank 17 of 19 virtual machine tools by recommenders
Free tool for running local VMs on macOS, Windows and Linux, installed with apt or brew. Main caveat: no clear guide to building it as a standalone program.
Free tool for running local VMs on macOS, Windows and Linux, installed with apt or brew. Main caveat: no clear guide to building it as a standalone program.
7 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 5
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 71%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 5 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 2.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Easy cross-platform local Linux VMs
“a local VM like multipass or a kind/microk8s cluster are perfectly fine”
Comment from 19 Jan 2026 in “Bubblewrap: A nimble way to prevent agents from accessing your .env files” “Multipass is just an apt-get or brew command away.”
Comment from 15 Jul 2026 in “I tricked Claude into leaking your deepest, darkest secrets” “Works on macOS, windows, Linux.”
Comment from 15 Jul 2026 in “I tricked Claude into leaking your deepest, darkest secrets”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Standalone build and install unclear
“Canonical wont tell you how to compile it and install it as a standalone program”
Comment from 19 Mar 2026 in “CVE-2026-3888: Important Snap Flaw Enables Local Privilege Escalation to Root”
Other virtual machine tools people recommend
The four most recommended other virtual machine tools, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| QEMU | 114 | 42 | 73% | 12 | 16 yrs4 owners | Approved |
| UTM | 49 | 11 | 82% | 12 | 1 yr3 owners | Approved |
| VirtualBox | 34 | 33 | 51% | 12 | 18 yrs3 owners | — |
| Lima | 31 | 3 | 91% | 11 | — | Approved |
| MultipassThis page | 5 | 2 | 71% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
7 of the 8 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“The issue I had with multipass was how difficult it was to access and backup files”
“Works on macOS, windows, Linux.”
“Multipass is just an apt-get or brew command away.”
“how slow Multipass felt when launching more than one Linux VM”
“They do document how to build and run, in the OS specific build docs.”
“Canonical wont tell you how to compile it and install it as a standalone program”
“a local VM like multipass or a kind/microk8s cluster are perfectly fine”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.