Broadcom VMware pricing and the VVF price in 2026. Why renewal quotes jump, and what brings them down.

Broadcom sells VMware only as a subscription, per physical core with a 16 core minimum per processor, inside the VCF and VVF bundles. Opening renewal quotes arrive at several times prior cost and settle far lower once your core count and exit plan are ready.

How does Broadcom price VMware now?

VMware is now sold only as a subscription, priced per physical processor core, with a minimum of 16 cores counted for every processor. Broadcom retired perpetual licensing, so you rent capacity on a one, three or five year term instead of owning a license and paying annual support on it.

Most of the portfolio now sits in two bundles:

• VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF). Compute, storage, networking and management in one bundle, at the highest per core rate.
• VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF). The compute stack, at a lower per core rate.

Former standalone products such as vSAN and NSX were folded into the bundles, vSAN into both and NSX into VCF only. Buying one component on its own is harder as a result, and the account team will steer you toward the larger package whether or not you use all of it. The background is in why Broadcom killed perpetual licenses.

What does the 16 core minimum per processor add to the bill?

Broadcom's counting rule, published in knowledge base article 313548, requires at least 16 physical cores to be licensed for each CPU in an ESXi host, even when the CPU has fewer. A host with two 10 core processors has 20 cores and is billed for 32.

On hosts below the floor, the minimum typically adds 10 to 25 percent to the bill. Fewer hosts with higher core counts usually license more efficiently than many small ones, so model the environment you plan to run during the term, not the one you run today. The core licensing guide covers edge cases.

What is included in VVF and what is included in VCF?

Broadcom's product documentation lists the contents of each bundle. For most buyers the practical difference comes down to NSX, the automation layer and how much vSAN capacity each licensed core brings with it.

What does VVF cost compared with VCF?

VVF is priced per core at a lower rate than VCF, and the choice between the two is usually the largest single line on a renewal quote. Broadcom does not post either rate on its website. The per core price reaches you through a partner quote and varies with term, volume and timing.

Current list and discount figures are tracked in our VCF pricing guide and in which Broadcom price list applies. The more useful comparison is cost per cluster. Buying VCF for clusters that only run vSphere and vSAN is the most common overspend we see, with 40 to 70 percent of the bundled capability going unused.

A worked example: one environment, three quotes

Say you run 20 hosts. Twelve older hosts have two 12 core processors each: 288 physical cores, billed as 384. Eight newer hosts have two 16 core processors each: 256 cores, billed as 256. Only the eight newer hosts run NSX.

To keep the arithmetic readable, assume $300 per core per year for VCF and $120 for VVF. These are round illustrative rates, so replace them with the figures on your own quote.

The third quote costs 42 percent less than the first before anyone has discussed a discount. If the old support bill was $60,000 a year, the opening quote was 3.2 times that, and the rightsized one is still about 1.9 times. Rightsizing narrows the increase, but the new model still costs more than the old support bill.

Two checks belong next to this table. The consolidated VVF cluster carries 72 TiB of vSAN entitlement (288 cores at 0.25 TiB), so if it stores more than that you buy extra vSAN capacity on top. And consolidation needs new servers, which pays best when it lines up with a refresh you had already planned.

Where does VVF stop being enough?

• NSX in production. A cluster that depends on NSX distributed firewall rules or overlay networking needs VCF, because VVF does not include NSX.
• Storage dense vSAN clusters. At 0.25 TiB per core, a cluster holding a lot of vSAN data can need so much extra capacity that VCF, at 1 TiB per core, costs less overall. Price both before you decide.
• Self service and migration tooling. VCF Automation and HCX are part of VCF and not part of VVF.
• A committed private cloud roadmap. If you will build out a full private cloud during the term, a VCF price agreed now for the growth may beat buying the upgrade later.

Why did my VMware renewal quote jump so much?

The jump is structural. Three changes compound each other, so opening quotes commonly land at 2x to 5x the prior perpetual plus support cost. The account team will not treat that as an error, because it is the model working as designed.

• Subscription replaces support. An environment that paid only annual support on perpetual licenses now rents what it used to own, on every core. This is the base of the increase.
• Bundle replaces components. You pay for the package, and the SKUs folded into VCF and VVF push you toward the larger bundle whether or not you use all of it.
• Minimum replaces actual. Processors with fewer than 16 cores are billed at the floor regardless of their real core count, which makes host consolidation a pricing decision as much as an architecture one.

Two corrections reprice the baseline before any discount: VVF instead of VCF wherever the workload allows, and consolidated hosts that clear the per processor minimum. Buy growth as extra capacity when you need it, rather than building it into the base term.

Which buying option fits which environment?

Why we advise against rushing the three year prepaid

The usual advice is to sign a three year prepaid term quickly and lock the deepest discount before prices rise again. We think the timing is backwards. A deep discount applied before the bundle and core count are corrected locks unused VCF capability and an inflated core count into the contract for three years.

Settle the bundle and the core count first. Once the baseline is right, take the multiyear term and its discount.

A deep discount on the wrong baseline is still an overspend, and a prepaid term keeps it on the books for three years.

How do you use a migration plan to lower the Broadcom quote?

Build a costed, scheduled plan to move some or all workloads to another platform, and make sure Broadcom knows it is real. Broadcom prices VMware against the cost and risk of you leaving, not against last year's invoice, so your exit cost is the most important number in the negotiation.

The plan does not have to be executed to work. Its credibility changes the conversation, because the account team then knows the alternative exists and has a price attached. That is why the renewal is decided before the quote arrives. The full negotiation detail is in the Broadcom VMware negotiation playbook.

What should the costed alternative contain?

• Scope. Which clusters or workloads would move and which would stay. A partial exit of the easiest workloads is often more believable than a full one.
• Target platform and its license cost. Hyper-V, a KVM based platform, Nutanix or public cloud, priced for the same workloads. The Hyper-V comparison and the perpetual license options guide cover the main routes.
• Migration effort. Staff time, partner services, testing and a period of running both platforms in parallel.
• Risk and schedule. Dates and named owners, showing when the first workloads move relative to the renewal date.
• Budget status. Whether the money has been requested or approved. A budget line is harder to dismiss than a slide.

Which parts of an exit plan will not hold up?

Workloads tied closely to VMware features are the weak spots. Heavy NSX microsegmentation, vSAN stretched clusters and applications certified only on VMware take time to move, and a plan claiming otherwise will be tested and set aside.

Put those workloads in the later phases and lead with what you could move this year. A smaller plan you can defend line by line carries more weight than a large one you cannot.

What have we seen in recent Broadcom VMware renewals?

Across roughly 30 to 40 VMware renewals we benchmarked in 2024 and 2025, the first quote almost always priced the whole environment as one bundle at full core count. Opening quotes ran at a median 3.1 times prior cost. Buyers cut them by an average of 38 percent, with the savings coming from the baseline.

In roughly half of those renewals, the deep multiyear discount had already been applied to an environment that was never rationalized. Three patterns came up again and again:

• Bundle inflation. On environments that only needed vSphere and vSAN, 40 to 70 percent of the bundled VCF capability went unused.
• Core minimum drag. Hosts with smaller processors were billed for a 16 core per processor minimum they did not physically reach, adding 10 to 25 percent.
• Inflated opening quotes. First figures at several times prior cost settled far lower once the buyer's exit plan was credible.

The reductions came from rightsizing the bundle, consolidating cores and presenting a credible migration alternative. The alternative moved Broadcom quotes more than any volume argument, because it made the account team price the renewal against your exit cost. The wider library sits in the VMware knowledge hub.

How do you check your own core count and bundle needs?

Run your own count before the renewal quote is built. The per core minimum and the bundle both price against a number you have to verify, and a quote built from Broadcom's entitlement records can differ from what actually runs today.

• License Counting PowerCLI Tool. Broadcom's own script, documented in KB 313548, reports cores and vSAN TiB per cluster for VCF and VVF. It needs PowerCLI 13.3 or later and PowerShell 7.4.6 or later, with a connection to vCenter.
• RVTools. The vHost tab lists sockets, cores per socket and total cores for every host, which makes hosts below the 16 core floor easy to spot.
• NSX Manager. Check whether distributed firewall rules, overlay segments or gateways are in production use. A cluster with no NSX deployed is a VVF candidate.
• vSAN capacity per cluster. Compare the capacity each cluster claims with the entitlement, 0.25 TiB per core on VVF and 1 TiB per core on VCF.
• Hardware refresh plan. List which hosts retire during the term, because the billed core count should follow the planned environment.

What mistakes inflate the count?

The most expensive mistake is letting Broadcom's records set the quantity, because every excess core is then paid for across the whole term. The others are smaller individually and add up quickly.

• Retired hosts still in vCenter. Decommissioned or powered off hosts left connected to vCenter get counted. Remove them before you run the tool or share an inventory.
• Threads counted as cores. Broadcom licenses physical cores. Hyperthreading doubles the logical processor count in some inventory exports, so read the physical core column and ignore the logical processor count.
• Every cluster on the production bundle. Disaster recovery and test clusters often get quoted on VCF without anyone checking whether they run NSX.
• Forgetting the floor on small servers. The minimum applies per processor, so a single socket edge server with 8 cores still counts 16. Branch and edge sites add up quickly.

What will the Broadcom account team say, and how should you answer?

Expect the same few lines in most renewals. Have a prepared answer for each, backed by your own numbers.

Which contract terms should you ask for?

Ask for these in writing before you sign. Broadcom does not offer them by default and will resist some, the reduction right in particular, but each one limits how far the next renewal can move against you.

• Renewal price cap. A maximum increase per core at the next renewal, so the next quote starts from today's rightsized price. Our note on price cap negotiation has the detail.
• Price hold on added cores. Growth cores bought during the term at the same per core rate, which removes the mid term uplift.
• Core count schedule. The agreed host by host count attached to the order, so audits and renewals start from your number.
• Bundle mix at renewal. The right to move cores between VCF and VVF at renewal as clusters change.
• Coterminous additions. Extra capacity that ends on the same date as the base subscription, so you keep one renewal date.
• Reduction right. The ability to renew fewer cores if you migrate workloads during the term.

What to do next

1. 12 months before renewal. Inventory every host, processor and physical core, and run the counting tool, so you own the number before Broadcom rounds it up.
2. 10 months out. Map which clusters need VCF and which need only VVF, and size the bundle to use.
3. 9 months out. Model a consolidated host design that reduces the per processor minimum, timed with your hardware refresh.
4. 6 months out. Cost a credible migration to an alternative platform, including effort and risk, and put it on a budget line.
5. 3 to 6 months out. Request the quote broken down by bundle, core and term, and negotiate bundle and core count before the discount or the term. The Broadcom VMware pricing report has benchmarks.
6. 1 month out. Commit to a multiyear term only once the baseline is rationalized and the contract terms above are in the order. Our VMware practice can run the renewal with you.

Frequently asked questions