Vagrant
Hacker ApprovedRanked 6 of 19 virtual machine tools by recommenders
People recommend Vagrant for building repeatable, disposable VM environments from a Vagrantfile, with quick up and destroy cycles. Critics say HashiCorp has mostly abandoned it.
People recommend Vagrant for building repeatable, disposable VM environments from a Vagrantfile, with quick up and destroy cycles. Critics say HashiCorp has mostly abandoned it.
37 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 25
- criticize it
- 12
- approval share
- 68%
Recommended in 10 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 25 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 2.1 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 10 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
Repeatable environments from a Vagrantfile
“Vagrantfile gives you a repeatable and portable environment with just a few lines of configuration.”
Comment from 9 Sep 2026 in “Vagrant is approaching EOL. No more "Docker for VMs"” “Vagrant lets me instantiate a full testing environment from a text file”
Comment from 10 Jul 2026 in “Ditching Vagrant: VMs with KVM and Virsh on Debian” “It works great and the whole setup consists of a single Vagrantfile”
Comment from 13 Jul 2026 in “Show HN: Clawk – Give coding agents a disposable Linux VM, not your laptop” - Comment from 20 Jan 2026 in “Running Claude Code dangerously (safely)”
Easy VM setup and teardown
“I can just `vagrant destroy` and `vagrant up` to get a clean slate without losing my context.”
Comment from 12 Jun 2026 in “Claude Fable is relentlessly proactive” “The 'Vagrantfile' is added, 'vagrant up' and claude login is run”
Comment from 20 Jan 2026 in “Running Claude Code dangerously (safely)” “won because of the Vagrantfile + `vagrant up` easiness”
Comment from 20 Jan 2026 in “Running Claude Code dangerously (safely)” - Comment from 28 Apr 2026 in “Ghostty is leaving GitHub”
Long-standing, battle-tested tool
“I used vagrant many years ago mostly successfully”
Comment from 20 Jan 2026 in “Running Claude Code dangerously (safely)” “Ansible and vagrant is easier and battle tested.”
Comment from 4 Jan 2026 in “I charged $18,000 for a Static HTML Page (2019)” “It was a lifesaver for me back in the day.”
Comment from 2 Mar 2026 in “Anthropic Cowork feature creates 10GB VM bundle on macOS without warning” Works well with AI agents
“my AI agent uses Vagrant to validate it's ansible yaml before it creates pull requests”
Comment from 11 Jul 2026 in “Ditching Vagrant: VMs with KVM and Virsh on Debian” “Vagrant is great for Claude!”
Comment from 20 Jan 2026 in “Running Claude Code dangerously (safely)”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Heavier than Docker containers
“I liked Vagrant back in the day, but that is in no way more lightweight than Docker.”
Comment from 20 Jan 2026 in “Running Claude Code dangerously (safely)” “the image was huge (full system) and the software slow (full virtualization)”
Comment from 8 Mar 2026 in “A Decade of Docker Containers” “big (corpulent, distended, ossified) vagrant”
Comment from 10 Jul 2026 in “Ditching Vagrant: VMs with KVM and Virsh on Debian” Seen as abandoned or outdated
“Hashicorp has mostly abandoned Vagrant, so I'd avoid it.”
Comment from 3 Feb 2026 in “Sandboxing AI Agents in Linux” “Too bad Vagrant is useless these days”
Comment from 31 Aug 2026 in “Meta Security Researcher's AI Agent Accidentally Deleted Her Emails” Weak security and shared folder risks
“Vagrant has no security focus at all”
Comment from 13 Jul 2026 in “Show HN: Clawk – Give coding agents a disposable Linux VM, not your laptop” “shared folders seem like footguns”
Comment from 12 Jun 2026 in “Claude Fable is relentlessly proactive”
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 |
| VagrantThis page | 25 | 12 | 68% | 10 | — | Approved |
What people said
40 of the 45 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“it was all a house of cards”
“Vagrantfile gives you a repeatable and portable environment with just a few lines of configuration.”
“Too bad Vagrant is useless these days”
“why not just simplify things and go back to Vagrant”
“Vagrant has no security focus at all”
“It works great and the whole setup consists of a single Vagrantfile”
“`vagrant snapshot` exists.”
“The magic of ssh makes it transparent for me”
“my AI agent uses Vagrant to validate it's ansible yaml before it creates pull requests”
“Vagrant lets me instantiate a full testing environment from a text file”
“big (corpulent, distended, ossified) vagrant”
“UTM is undefeated for me, especially in combination with Vagrant.”
“shared folders seem like footguns”
“I can just `vagrant destroy` and `vagrant up` to get a clean slate without losing my context.”
“Vagrant I used a lot early on in my career to learn Ruby on Rails in Windows. Thanks a lot for your work!”
“Vagrant made VMs easy to use.”
“there's no Ruby, no vagrant reload, no box format.”
“the image was huge (full system) and the software slow (full virtualization)”
“I was getting bummed by the alternatives like LXC, juju charms or vagrant”
“that possible future of massive block devices assembled using Vagrant and Packer has thankfully been avoided”
“It was a lifesaver for me back in the day.”
“Hashicorp has mostly abandoned Vagrant, so I'd avoid it.”
“I have a Vagrant setup inspired by this blogpost”
“if I packaged it as a VM, then I'd get both isolation and determinism”
“syncs folders the way that Vagrant does by default”
“I liked Vagrant back in the day, but that is in no way more lightweight than Docker.”
“no waiting for "initialization" on first booting a Vagrant box”
“The 'Vagrantfile' is added, 'vagrant up' and claude login is run”
“Vagrant is great for Claude!”
“I used vagrant many years ago mostly successfully”
“won because of the Vagrantfile + `vagrant up` easiness”
“Automating this setup is also somewhat easily possible with”
“Locally, I'd use Vagrant with a provisioning script that installs whatever you need on top of one of the prebuilt Vagrant boxes.”
“I've re-discovered Vagrant and have been using it exactly for this and it's surprisingly effective for my workflows.”
“I think Vagrant might also be what you want.”
“it's surprisingly effective for my workflows”
“Vagrant helps 'keep it simple'”
“Ansible and vagrant is easier and battle tested.”
“Even Vagrant is still easier than we have today.”
“Some of these tools have been around for AGES.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.