Docker Machine vs VirtualBox: What are the differences?

What is Docker Machine? Machine management for a container-centric world. Machine lets you create Docker hosts on your computer, on cloud providers, and inside your own data center. It creates servers, installs Docker on them, then configures the Docker client to talk to them.

What is VirtualBox? Run nearly any operating system on a single machine and to freely switch between OS instances running simultaneously. VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2.

Docker Machine belongs to "Container Tools" category of the tech stack, while VirtualBox can be primarily classified under "Virtualization Platform".

"Easy docker hosts management" is the top reason why over 12 developers like Docker Machine, while over 357 developers mention "Free" as the leading cause for choosing VirtualBox.

Docker Machine is an open source tool with 5.4K GitHub stars and 1.56K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Docker Machine's open source repository on GitHub.

Lyft, Coursera, and Typeform are some of the popular companies that use VirtualBox, whereas Docker Machine is used by Docker, DNT, and Medallia. VirtualBox has a broader approval, being mentioned in 724 company stacks & 976 developers stacks; compared to Docker Machine, which is listed in 43 company stacks and 47 developer stacks.