Side by side

XCP-ng Center vs Xen Project Hypervisor

Both stand on virtualization management software. Which one you can start free with, which one lets you read the code, and what each costs once you pay.

XCP-ng Center

Free plan Windows

XCP-ng Center provides host, pool, and virtual machine management for Windows, with both installer and portable options. Its deprecated, unsupported status and settings migration change are important considerations.

Visit XCP-ng Center

Xen Project Hypervisor

Free plan LinuxSelf-hosted

Xen offers a free hypervisor with guest isolation and a separate toolstack for managing virtual machines across hosts. Its downloads are source releases intended for building, packaging, and platform integration.

Visit Xen Project Hypervisor

The facts

	XCP-ng Center	Xen Project Hypervisor
Free plan	Yes	Yes
Open source	Not published	Not published
Runs on	Windows	Linux, Self-hosted
Lowest paid plan	Not published	Free or on request
Plans published	None	1
Maker	Not published	Not published
Website	xcp-ng.org	xenproject.org
On virtualization management software	#19 of 34	#15 of 34

XCP-ng Center: what it does well

Manages XCP-ng and Citrix XenServer environments.
Can deploy and migrate virtual machines.
Free and open source under BSD 2-Clause.
Can run portably with settings and logs beside the executable.
The v25.04 release includes an MSI installer.

What to know first

Documented as deprecated and unsupported.
Community members maintain it in their free time.
Builds 25054 and later do not migrate previous settings.
Xen Orchestra is identified as the official XCP-ng graphical client.

Xen Project Hypervisor: what it does well

Runs multiple operating systems on one host
Supports VM snapshots, nested virtualization, and GPU acceleration
XAPI supports multi-host management and VM migration
Windows and Linux guest templates are available
Software hosted on XenProject.org is licensed under GPL2

What to know first

Downloads are source releases rather than ready-to-run packages
Linux, NetBSD, and FreeBSD are the named host options

Alternatives to XCP-ng Center Alternatives to Xen Project Hypervisor The whole list