XCP-ng vs Proxmox 2026: Support Pricing and Migration

As of October 2026, XCP-ng and Proxmox VE are both free and open source, and the difference you pay for is support: Vates prices XCP-ng support per host (Essential is $2,000 a year for up to 3 hosts, Pro is $1,000 per host per year with a 3-host minimum), while Proxmox prices per CPU socket, from EUR 120 to 1,100 a year. XCP-ng 8.3 LTS is supported until November 30, 2028, and Proxmox VE 9.2 shipped on May 21, 2026, with no end-of-life date announced for version 9.

Both sit in our VMware Alternatives Tracker, and every value below comes from the vendors’ own pages.

Key facts

Plan	Price	Limits	Included	Costs extra
Proxmox VE Community	EUR 120 per socket per year	No support tickets	Every feature, Enterprise Repository	Support tickets
Proxmox VE Basic	EUR 370 per socket per year	3 tickets a year, 1 business day response	Every feature, Proxmox Datacenter Manager	More tickets, faster response
Proxmox VE Standard	EUR 550 per socket per year	10 tickets a year, 4-hour response	Remote support via SSH	24/7 arrives by the end of 2026
Proxmox VE Premium	EUR 1,100 per socket per year	Unlimited tickets, 2-hour response	24/7 support from October 19, 2026	VAT where applicable
Vates VMS Essential	$2,000 per year	Up to 3 hosts; 6 tickets a year; no incremental backup or replication	XCP-ng support for all hosts, 1 Xen Orchestra appliance	XOSTOR storage: $2,400 a year
Vates VMS Essential+	$4,000 per year	Up to 3 hosts; unlimited tickets; 24-hour response	Complete Xen Orchestra feature set	XOSTOR storage: $2,400 a year
Vates VMS Pro	$1,000 per host per year	3-host minimum; 64 hosts per pool; no file-level restore or load balancing	Unlimited tickets, business-day support	XOSTOR: $800 per host per year
Vates VMS Enterprise	$1,800 per host per year	4-host minimum; 24/7, 1-hour response	Complete feature set, setup and upgrade help	XOSTOR: $1,200 per host per year

XCP-ng vs Proxmox side by side

	XCP-ng (Vates VMS)	Proxmox VE
Hypervisor	Xen; successor to XCP, the open-source XenServer	KVM virtual machines plus LXC containers
Licensing	Free and open source; optional support per host per year (flat fee up to 3 hosts)	Free and open source (GNU AGPLv3); optional support per occupied CPU socket per year
Published price	$2,000 or $4,000 a year up to 3 hosts; $1,000 to $1,800 per host above that	EUR 120 to 1,100 per socket per year (euros only)
Free option	Yes; Xen Orchestra source builds are free but unsupported	Yes: the full product with every feature
VMware migration tool	XO V2V in Xen Orchestra: warm migration over the ESXi API	Import wizard (since Proxmox VE 8.2) with live import from ESXi
Current version	XCP-ng 8.3 LTS (October 7, 2024)	Proxmox VE 9.2 (May 21, 2026)
Support dates	8.3 LTS supported until November 30, 2028	Version 9: not yet announced; version 8 ended August 2026
HCI or storage	XOSTOR add-on, priced separately, 3-host minimum	Ceph and ZFS included at every level; Ceph needs at least 3 servers
Management and backup	XOA appliance (a VM) with built-in backup; features vary by plan	Web GUI on every node, no feature gating; Proxmox Backup Server is a separate product
Where it fits	Small clusters on a flat fee; XenServer veterans	Single-socket servers, Linux teams, HCI on a budget

What each one includes

Proxmox VE doesn’t gate features: high availability, clustering, backup and software-defined storage come with every plan, and plans differ only in support. Management runs on the nodes, with no appliance. Our Proxmox enterprise-readiness scorecard covers where it holds up at scale.

XCP-ng is managed through Xen Orchestra, deployed as XOA, a pre-built VM. Every Vates plan includes one appliance, XCP-ng support for all hosts, and full backups with encryption and S3 targets. The rest of the feature set depends on the plan: Essential+ and Enterprise get everything, Essential and Pro do not. You can build Xen Orchestra from source for free, but Vates offers no professional support for that and recommends XOA for production.

The hidden limits

XCP-ng and Vates VMS

Essential and Essential+ cap pools at 3 hosts. Pro and Enterprise allow 64 hosts per pool.
Features are gated by plan. Essential lacks incremental backup, replication, LDAP/SSO and rolling pool updates. Pro lacks file-level restore, load balancing, audit logs and warm migration. XO V2V uses warm migration, so confirm with Vates that your plan covers it.
Enterprise needs at least 4 hosts, so 24/7 support with a 1-hour response starts at $7,200 a year.
XOSTOR hyperconverged storage costs extra and needs at least 3 hosts.
XO V2V can’t automatically migrate disks larger than 2 TB minus 8 MB, raw disks aren’t supported, and warm migration needs at least one snapshot on the source VM.
8.3 support ends November 30, 2028, short of the usual LTS window of up to 5 years, to make way for XCP-ng 9.0.

Proxmox VE

All nodes in a cluster must use the same subscription level.
Prices are in euros only.
24/7 support is new: Premium from October 19, 2026, Standard by the end of 2026.
The ESXi importer can’t pull vSAN-backed or encrypted disks directly.

What it costs for a 3-host cluster

Take 3 hosts with 2 CPU sockets each, so 6 sockets.

Proxmox VE: Basic EUR 2,220, Standard EUR 3,300, Premium EUR 6,600 a year.
Vates VMS: Essential $2,000, Pro 3 x $1,000 = $3,000, or Essential+ $4,000 a year for the complete feature set. Enterprise needs a fourth host.
Add hyperconverged storage: Proxmox’s Ceph adds nothing; XOSTOR adds $2,400 a year, taking Vates Pro to $5,400.

Two things shift the math. Single-socket servers halve the Proxmox bill (Standard drops to EUR 1,650) without changing Vates. And Vates takes up to 10% off 3-year terms and up to 15% off 5-year terms; Proxmox terms run one year. Weighing external arrays instead? See our vSAN alternatives analysis.

How they compare with other VMware alternatives

Three other platforms from the VMware Alternatives Tracker come up in the same evaluations:

XenServer 9: XCP-ng’s commercial cousin, licensed per socket and sold only within a Citrix subscription, with no public price; supported until July 2031.
VMware VCF and VVF: per-core subscriptions with a 16-core minimum per CPU and no published list price.
Microsoft Hyper-V: Windows Server 2025 Datacenter at a suggested MSRP of $6,771 per 16 core licenses, with unlimited VMs.

Who each one fits

XCP-ng fits small sites that want a flat yearly fee and XenServer veterans who want backup in the console.
Proxmox VE fits Linux and KVM teams, estates that need hyperconverged storage without an add-on, single-socket servers, and anyone who wants containers beside VMs.

Bottom line

For 3 dual-socket hosts, the headline prices are close (Vates Pro $3,000, Proxmox Standard EUR 3,300), but Proxmox includes every feature while Vates needs Essential+ at $4,000 for the full set.
If you need hyperconverged storage, Proxmox is cheaper, because Ceph is included and XOSTOR is not.
If you need 24/7 vendor support today, Vates Enterprise has it now; Proxmox Premium starts October 19, 2026.
Plan for XCP-ng 9.0 before November 30, 2028. If you’re still negotiating with Broadcom, our renewal playbook shows how to use either one as leverage.

Frequently asked questions

Is XCP-ng free?

Yes. XCP-ng and Xen Orchestra are open source. Vates VMS adds the supported appliance and professional support.

Which is cheaper, XCP-ng or Proxmox?

It depends on sockets per host, storage and features. Per-host Vates pricing favors dual-socket servers and per-socket Proxmox pricing favors single-socket ones. Proxmox is cheaper once you need hyperconverged storage or Xen Orchestra’s full feature set.

Can both migrate VMs from VMware?

Yes: XO V2V in Xen Orchestra and Proxmox VE’s import wizard both pull VMs from ESXi. Test large disks and vSAN-backed VMs first.

When does XCP-ng 8.3 support end?

November 30, 2028. Vates set that date to make way for XCP-ng 9.0.

Sources

Prices checked against the vendors’ own pages on October 7, 2026.

Buying? Start from RFPhub’s free Virtualization Platform RFP template.