Comparison ·
VirtFusion vs Proxmox: two different answers to "how do I sell VPS?"
VirtFusion or Proxmox to sell VPS? They sit at different layers. What each one actually is, an honest table with the blanks left blank, and where a panel fits.
By Provibr
People search for this because they are deciding how to run a VPS business: hand customers Proxmox's own interface, or put a purpose-built control panel like VirtFusion in front. It is a fair question, but the two are not really the same kind of thing, and seeing that clearly is most of the answer.
Provibr manages Proxmox VE live, so we know that side from having built against it. VirtFusion we can only describe from what it publishes. As the honest table below shows, that is less than we would like. Where we could not confirm something, we say so rather than fill the gap with a guess.
The layer difference, which decides most of it
Proxmox VE is a hypervisor. It turns a physical server into a platform that runs virtual machines and containers, and it ships with a web interface. But that interface is an administrator's tool: it exposes the whole datacenter, every node, every VM, the storage and the networking. It was never designed to be handed to an end customer buying one VPS.
VirtFusion is a control panel that sits on top of KVM. It installs its own agent on a bare hypervisor host and gives you the parts a VPS business needs that a raw hypervisor does not: a customer-facing panel, reseller support, self-service reinstalls and consoles, and integration with billing systems.
VirtFusion is installed directly onto a hypervisor host and manages the virtual machines from there; the host is then added to a central control server. It is a KVM-based control panel, not a layer that runs on top of Proxmox.
So the real choice is not "which is better software"; they do different jobs. It is: is Proxmox's built-in admin UI good enough to run your VPS business, or do you need a panel built for selling?
The table, with the blanks left blank
| Proxmox VE | VirtFusion | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Hypervisor with an admin UI | A VPS control panel on bare KVM |
| Open source | Available now | Not offered |
| Runs the hypervisor itself | Available now | no, it drives KVM on the host |
| Customer-facing VPS panel | Not offered | Available now |
| Built-in billing integration | Not offered | WHMCS, Blesta, Clientexec |
| Container (LXC) support | Available now | Not published |
| Published price | €120 to €1,100 per socket per year, optional | Not published |
Two cells are blank on purpose. A comparison that fills an unknown with a dash and lets you read it as "no" is a trick, so: "Not published" means we could not confirm it, not that the answer is bad. VirtFusion's public pages describe a per-hypervisor, per-cluster licensing model but did not show us tiers, rates or minimums when we checked, and its container support beyond KVM was not something we could verify from the documentation. Ask them.
VirtFusion's pricing page describes "flexible pricing for commercial and non-commercial use" and a licensing model based on hypervisors and clusters, but did not display specific tiers, rates or minimums when checked on 21 August 2026.
Proxmox VE is free and open source (AGPLv3). The optional subscription runs from about €120 per CPU socket per year (Community) to about €1,100 (Premium), and buys the enterprise update repository and support rather than extra features.
What each one gives you that the other does not
Proxmox gives you the whole hypervisor for free: KVM and LXC, clustering, high availability, live migration, Ceph and ZFS storage, an API. You also get the freedom to build your own customer layer on top of it, or not have one at all. What it does not give you is anything customer-facing: no reseller model, no per-customer panel, no billing integration. Those you build or buy.
VirtFusion gives you exactly that missing layer: a panel your customers log into, self-service actions, reseller accounts, and hooks into the billing systems that hosting businesses already run. What it does not give you is the hypervisor; it needs bare KVM hosts to manage, and it is a commercial licence rather than free software.
VirtFusion positions itself as a modern virtualization control panel for hosting providers, and integrates with billing systems including WHMCS, Blesta and Clientexec for automated VPS provisioning.
So which one should you pick?
Pick Proxmox alone if the estate is internal, or your team is technical enough that the admin UI is fine, or you intend to build (or already have) your own customer-facing layer. For a private cloud or an in-house virtualization platform, Proxmox on its own is a complete and free answer.
Pick VirtFusion (on bare KVM) if you are selling VPS to end customers, you want a turnkey customer panel with reseller support and billing integration, and you would rather buy that layer than build it. That is precisely the gap it fills, and it fills it on its own KVM stack rather than on Proxmox.
They are not stacked on each other. This is the part that trips people up: VirtFusion does not run on Proxmox. It manages its own KVM hosts. So this is genuinely "Proxmox's stack" versus "VirtFusion's stack," not "Proxmox versus a thing you add to Proxmox."
The third option: keep Proxmox, add the layer above it
There is a middle path the head-to-head hides, and it is the one we build. If you like Proxmox (its price, its openness, its feature set) but need the customer-facing and reseller layer it lacks, you do not have to abandon Proxmox to get it.
Provibr sits above Proxmox VE and drives it through its API. It gives you the parts VirtFusion would: a customer and reseller model, capacity limits, billing, a console. Proxmox stays your hypervisor rather than being replaced by a different KVM stack. The agent dials outward from your own network, so no server needs an inbound port opened and nothing replaces what you already run. In other words, "Proxmox plus Provibr" reaches a lot of the same outcome VirtFusion aims at, without changing the hypervisor underneath. Whether that is the right shape for you depends on whether you are already committed to Proxmox, which is exactly the situation many people asking this question are in.
Frequently asked questions
Does VirtFusion run on top of Proxmox?
No, and this is the part that trips people up. VirtFusion installs onto a hypervisor host and manages KVM from there; it is not a layer that runs on Proxmox. So the choice is one stack against another, not Proxmox against something you bolt onto Proxmox.
What does VirtFusion cost?
We could not confirm it. Its pricing page describes a licensing model based on hypervisors and clusters but did not display tiers, rates or minimums when we checked on 21 August 2026. "Not published" means we could not check it, not that the answer is bad.
Is Proxmox's own interface good enough to give to customers?
It was never designed for that. It is an administrator's tool that exposes the whole datacenter: every node, every VM, the storage and the networking. The customer-facing panel is the part you build or buy on top.
Can I keep Proxmox and still get a customer-facing layer?
Yes, and that is the middle path a head-to-head hides. Provibr sits above Proxmox VE and drives it through its API, so the hypervisor underneath stays what it already is.
Read next
- Provibr vs VirtFusion: the direct head-to-head, including what VirtFusion does not publish
- VirtFusion alternatives: the wider VPS-panel field
- The Proxmox integration: what a layer above Proxmox actually does
- Proxmox setup: the API token, the node model, and the customer-facing pieces Proxmox leaves out
- Proxmox vs oVirt: the same layer question with the other open-source platform, and who is still building it.
Proxmox pricing and licensing were read from proxmox.com on 21 August 2026; VirtFusion's model, integrations and pricing page from virtfusion.com and its documentation on the same day. Proxmox behaviour is measured from managing it in production. Where VirtFusion does not publish a detail, this page marks it "Not published" rather than guessing.
