How to Download & Install VMware Fusion Pro for Mac for Free
VMware Fusion Pro is now available for free for personal use, according to a blog post on the developers website.
VMware Fusion Pro is powerful hypervisor software that allows you to create and run virtual machines on your Mac, enabling the capability to do things like run a virtualized Windows installation atop MacOS, or run Linux alongside MacOS, or similar situations where you’d want to run multiple operating systems simultaneously. We frequently cover virtual machines and some of the neat things you can do with them, and VMWare Fusion Pro offers another virtualization option alongside UTM, VirtualBox, QEMU, and Parallels.
We’re going to walk through the process of downloading and installing VMWare Fusion Pro for free, using the new personal use license.
How to Download & Install VMWare Fusion Pro for Free
You’ll have to go through a somewhat cumbersome registration and download process, but once you do you’ll have full access to VMware Fusion Pro for free on your Mac, available for personal use. Here’s what you’ll need to do:
- Go to support.broadcom.com and click on “Register” to create an account for Broadcom
- Once you are registered for a (free) account and logged in, you will have access to download VMWare Fusion 13 Pro, so agree to the terms of service and click the download icon to get the installer (some users are reporting difficulty finding the download, try using this link to product downloads page – thanks wgs!)
- When finished downloading, open your ~/Downloads folder and open the “VMware-Fusion-13_universal.dmg” file to mount the disk image, then launch the installer
- Agree to the terms of service for using VMware Fusion Pro and then choose that you want to use VMware Fusion Pro for personal use and proceed with the installation
- VMWare Fusion Pro will now launch and you can create a virtual machine or configure an existing one if you have a disk image to use, or download a Windows installer directly from Microsoft
Now that VMware Fusion Pro is installed on your Mac, you’re free to setup or create a new virtual machine. The app makes it particularly easy to download and install the latest versions of Windows (Windows 11 specifically, at the moment), so you can quickly have a Windows 11 VM setup in short order if you choose that option.
VMware Fusion Pro performance is really good, especially running on any Apple Silicon Mac, as you can expect with basically all modern virtualization experiences. But whether or not you could tell the difference between VMWare Fusion Pro, Parallels, and UTM, are perhaps up to the user and how the VM is used.
We frequently cover helpful guides and tips for virtual machines, and this is not the only way you can use Windows 11 on an Apple Silicon Mac. Another option, which is also free, is to use UTM to run Windows 11 on an M-series Mac.
Do you like VMware Fusion Pro for virtual machines, or do you prefer another app for virtualization? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
If you are a registered VMware user, this may have worked last month but it won’t work now. I just spent an hour providing instructions, testing it to get it only to find out everything has changed from last night and it temporary seems unavailable as it looks like they are transferring access to Digital River and all you can do now is get on a wait list.
Registered, but WHERE is the download to be found? Hidden in plain sight I suppose. Did find this …
Download VMware Fusion
The process to download VMware Fusion is described below:
1. Navigate to the VMware Download Center.
2. Under the Select Version drop-down menu, select the required version.
3. Click Go to Downloads … etc.
Step one goes off to a redirect page saying “VMware customers should use the Broadcom Support Portal for all of their self-service licensing and support.”
Fine … where’s the link to even start getting a download???
Keep in mind that many of the guest operating systems that are available for use with VMWare Fusion will not work with M-series Mac silicon. Happily, I was able to locate a 64-bit Arm version of Windows 11 that is compatible. But so far, I have not found any versions of Linux that work with my Mac Studio.
There are several Apple Silicon compatible Linux distributions that will run natively or in virtual machines, including Fedora and Ubuntu, amongst a few more obscure distros.
We covered this with running Fedora in UTM recently:
https://osxdaily.com/2023/12/30/experiment-explore-with-fedora-linux-on-mac-with-utm/
https://osxdaily.com/2024/01/01/you-can-now-run-fedora-linux-on-apple-silicon-macs/
And Ubuntu for ARM, which we still need to cover apparently, can be found at:
https://cdimage.ubuntu.com/jammy/daily-live/current/
Hope that helps!
Did anyone attempt to download Fusion 13? Navigating the Broadcom website is a virtual labyrinth; I finally managed to find a link to download Fusion 13, but clicking on it, takes you to digitalriver.com/cloudvista/ which requires you to sign up and advises that the CloudVista store is coming soon. So there is no way I can find to download Fusion 13. What am I missing?
I don’t know what the link you post is but I would avoid that site and URL, and definitely don’t give them your email address or personal information since they’re an unknown entity.
Broadcom is a huge multinational megacorp however, so they’re legitimate, and they just bought VMware. I know the download is a little tricky to find, but once you register and login to Broadcom, it will be accessible on the downloads page.
https://support.broadcom.com/group/ecx/productdownloads?subfamily=VMware+Fusion
Link was successful to get Fusion Pro ver 13.5.2
HOWEVER
the VMware Tools is NOT listed, although it’s available for personal use too.
I added Tools to the link (as above ‘VMware+Fusion+Tools’) but that didn’t work.
(My install of openSUSE 66-bit ARM version successfully starts installing, but when it gets beyond the scrolling lines of execution, I get black screen. Hopefully the Tools will resolve.)
The missing link:
https://support.broadcom.com/group/ecx/productdownloads?subfamily=VMware+Fusion
Thanks wgs, I have added this link to the directions since many people have had difficulty finding the VMware download.
As others have suggested, it’s surprising that Broadcom spent $60 Billion to buy VMware only to make accessing the product download so difficult! Presumably they’re mostly interested in the enterprise side of things and less on the consumer end, but that’s pure speculation.
Love your site, but this has to be the worst tip ever.
I just wasted 20 mins trying to find the download.
Doing the above steps gives no access to Fusion.
I don’t even see it there…
I know it can be frustrating to find the download, I registered, went through a million hoops including they wanted a home/business address before i could download it, OK… cumbersome and annoying. With how difficult they make to find and get to, you’d think Broadcom was not interested in getting people to actually use the product they just spent billions to acquire… gotta love bureaucracies!
anyone have a direct link for the download, just had heart ablation surgery and this anesthesia is impacting my hunting skills
I had the same experience, but found the link on Arse Technica.
https://support.broadcom.com/group/ecx/productdownloads?subfamily=VMware+Fusion
Same here. Worthless “tip” without particulars on how to find the download page, step-by-step. Broadcom’s search tools are weak, badly labeled and segregated. Several “download” buttons lead to apparently third-party sites, which deserves explanation in your “tip.” Did you try your directions on anyone else?
I completely agree. Instead of “…you will have access to download VMWare Fusion 13 Pro”, how about giving a link to that access?
Knowing you’d spent 20 minutes, I limited my search to 10 fruitless minutes.
The download links are using CDN’s, and versions differ too, so a direct download link won’t work. However, as wgs pointed out, once you have registered and logged in with Broadcom, you can use this link and you should see the VMware downloads:
https://support.broadcom.com/group/ecx/productdownloads?subfamily=VMware+Fusion
Hope that helps!
Thanks for the link … and actually did the download and did the Fusion 13 Pro installation on my Apple Studio M2 Max.
Earlier, after doing the account setup as described, my download page was blank. With your link, it was populated for a download.
Many thanks!!! :)
Same here. What a waste of time. I finally got to a download link, but every time I click on it, it takes me to digitalriver.com/cloudvista/ and I get a page saying that the CloudVista Store will be coming soon. And of course, it asks you for my email address so I can sign up for their mailing list, but when you do nothing else happens. What bull! … 🤬