Hyper-V Licensing Calculator 2026: Hypervisor Licensing Cost vs VMware, Proxmox, XCP-ng and Azure Local

Hyper-V has no separate price: it is licensed through Windows Server 2025, and the Datacenter edition costs $6,771 per 16-core pack at Microsoft’s suggested MSRP ^S02. Standard costs $1,176 per 16-core pack and covers 2 VMs per full licensing of the host ^S02. Proxmox VE support runs from EUR 120 to EUR 1,100 per CPU socket per year ^S01. The Azure Local host fee is $0.33 per physical core per day ^S08, with no core minimum and no maximum ^S09.

The calculator turns hosts, sockets, cores and VMs into 1-year and 3-year licence or support costs for Hyper-V, Proxmox VE, XCP-ng, Azure Local and VMware. It uses vendor list prices retrieved 2026-10-07. Broadcom publishes no VMware list price, so the VMware rows use the quote you enter.

How to use the Hyper-V licensing calculator

1. Enter your cluster: hosts, sockets per host, physical cores per socket and total VMs. Hyperthreads do not count on any core-priced platform here ^{S03 S07 S10}. The defaults are 4 hosts, 2 sockets, 32 cores and 150 VMs.
2. Pick the term, 1 year or 3 years. For VMware, type your Broadcom quote in USD per core per year under “Your VMware quote, optional” in the first group of inputs. Without a quote the VMware rows show licensed cores only. The VMware 72-core order minimum is off by default and can be switched on. It was reported in March 2025 in a distributor notice to French partners ^S14. It was reported reversed in April 2025 ^{S27 S28} and in May 2025 ^S29. Those are news and vendor-blog reports, not Broadcom. Two UK pages still state it later: a reseller page dated December 2025 that says UK only ^S15 and a UK firm’s page updated October 2026 with no regional scope ^S16. Broadcom’s 2026 licensing pages state 16 cores per processor, and no per-order minimum was found on them ^{S30 S31}. Enter a discount percent for any platform where you hold a negotiated price, and the calculator reduces that platform’s cost by it. Optionally add a migration labour line as hours per VM times the number of VMs times your hourly rate; it is your own estimate, and this page supplies no labour figure.
3. Read the results table. Expand “Arithmetic” on any row for each step and its data rows. Copy the results as text or use the share link to keep the scenario.

What the Hyper-V licensing cost result means

Each row is the cost of that platform on your cluster, before tax. Discounts and labour apply only if you enter them.

The 1-year figure is the first year of cost. The 3-year figure depends on how the vendor sells. Windows Server is a one-time licence price at suggested MSRP ^S02. S02 does not state a licence term, so this page treats the licence as bought once, and its 3-year figure equals its 1-year figure. Proxmox sells a one-year subscription term ^S01, Vates sells per year ^S06 and Azure Local is a daily meter ^S08. Their 3-year figures are three times the first year, with no multi-year discount applied.

Included: the hypervisor licence, or the vendor support subscription where the hypervisor is free software. Proxmox VE and XCP-ng rows are the price of a support tier ^{S01 S06}. VMware support comes with the core price for VCF ^S23 and for VVF ^S13, and so does vSAN entitlement ^S10, so no support line is added.

Excluded:

• Windows Server CALs, required for every user or device ^S02 but not priced on the pricing page, plus Software Assurance and the per-VM licensing option.
• Support uplifts above the chosen Proxmox or Vates tier, and Vates XOSTOR storage add-ons.
• The Azure Local Windows Server guest add-on at $23.30 per physical core per month ^S03.
• Volume, negotiated and multi-year discounts unless you enter a discount percent, including the Vates offer of up to 10 percent off a 3-year term ^S06.
• Taxes, hardware, and migration labour unless you enter your own estimate.

Hyper-V and hypervisor licensing rules the calculator applies

Rules by platform.

Nutanix NCI and Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization Engine are not in the calculator. Nutanix publishes no list price ^S19 and Red Hat publishes none for OVE ^S05. The only dollar figures found are reseller SKU listings, not vendor prices, and the Red Hat Standard SKU price is unverified, so no price is shown. Nutanix licenses every core in the cluster ^S19; Red Hat licenses one subscription per bare-metal node with unlimited VMs ^S22.

Worked example: Hyper-V licensing cost vs VMware, Proxmox, XCP-ng and Azure Local

Example (b) uses the calculator defaults: 4 hosts, 2 sockets per host, 32 cores per socket and 150 VMs. That is 8 sockets and 256 physical cores ^derived, or 37.5 VMs per host on average. Figures are USD at list price with the exclusions above.

Datacenter licenses all 64 cores on each host once. Standard relicenses those cores for every 2 VMs ^S07, so a host carrying 38 VMs needs 19 full licensings. On list price Datacenter is cheaper from 11 VMs per host ^derived. Inputs: each Standard licensing of the host covers 2 VMs ^S07, so 11 VMs need 6 of them. Six Standard packs at $1,176 cost more than one Datacenter pack at $6,771 ^S02. One Datacenter pack costs 5.76 Standard packs ^derived. Vates Essential and Essential+ are absent because they are capped at 3 hosts ^S06.

Per-core list prices compared

Windows Server 2025 Datacenter works out to $423.19 per core and Standard to $73.50 per core, each the 16-core pack MSRP divided by 16 ^derived. Both are one-time licence prices at suggested MSRP ^S02. Pay-as-you-go Windows Server through Azure Arc is $33.58 per core per month ^S02, or $402.96 per core per year ^derived. The Azure Local host fee comes to $120.45 per core per year ^derived. Proxmox, Vates and Red Hat do not price per core, so the chart leaves them out.

Assumptions and data sources

Every price is a vendor list price or a vendor API meter, retrieved on 2026-10-07 from the vendor’s own page or API. The dataset is version 2. It adds the order-minimum evidence rows retrieved on 2026-10-11 and changes no price. Proxmox publishes EUR net of VAT ^S01. The calculator converts at the European Central Bank reference rate of 1.1269 USD per EUR for 2026-10-06 ^S26, rounds to whole dollars per socket once, then multiplies. The rate can be overridden. Azure Local is billed at $0.33 per physical core per day ^S08. On a 365-day year that is 120.45 USD per core per year and 10.04 USD per core per month ^derived. The 60-day trial ^S03 and Azure Hybrid Benefit, which waives the host fee for Datacenter with active Software Assurance ^S03, are off by default.

Broadcom does not publish list prices for VCF or VVF, so the calculator computes VMware cost only from the quote you enter.

Hyper-V is a role of Windows Server, and each Standard or Datacenter licence covers one Hyper-V host ^S02. The free standalone Hyper-V Server ends with the 2019 release. Microsoft’s lifecycle page ^S04 carries the extended end date as the timestamp 1/10/2029 6:59:59 AM, set to display as a Pacific Time date, and no successor. This page reads that as the end of 9 January 2029, so it is not a 2026 purchase option.

Known limits

• Broadcom’s VVF FAQ ^S13 lists VVF 9.1 as generally available; availability through resellers can vary by region.
• The calculator does not apply a 72-core minimum order per VMware product unless you switch it on. The rule was reported in March 2025 in a distributor notice to French partners ^S14. Reports from April 2025 ^{S27 S28} and May 2025 ^S29 say it was reversed. Two UK pages still state it later. A reseller page dated December 2025 says UK only ^S15, and a UK firm’s page updated October 2026 gives no regional scope ^S16. The order-minimum sources (S14 to S16) are news and reseller sources. The reversal reports are news and vendor-blog reports. None is a Broadcom document. The reversal reports name no distributor and publish no price list. Broadcom’s 2026 pages state 16 cores per processor ^{S30 S31}. No per-order minimum was found on either page, but absence from a page is not proof. The June 2026 terms say ordering terms sit on the quote or order form ^S31, so a quote-level rule would not appear there. Whether any order minimum applies to you is therefore unconfirmed. Switching it on changes only orders under 72 licensed cores. It does not change the worked example, which licenses 256 cores ^derived.
• Microsoft sells core licences in 2-packs and 16-packs ^S07 but publishes no MSRP for the 2-pack. Hosts whose core count is not a multiple of 16 are priced with the 2-pack at one eighth of the 16-pack MSRP. That is an assumption, stated in the arithmetic.
• Windows Server Standard assumes VMs spread evenly with no failover headroom. Real clusters license for the worst-case host after failover, which raises the Standard figure.
• All hosts in a scenario are identical. Mixed clusters need one run per host type and a manual sum.
• Prices change. Microsoft states that prices vary by country ^S02, and all USD figures are US list. Vendor pages are rechecked quarterly; the data date at the top of this page says what the calculator holds.