VMware perpetual license end of life, and why Broadcom did it. The higher price is meant to last.

Broadcom ended VMware perpetual license sales on December 11, 2023, 19 days after the acquisition closed, trading support fees of about 20 percent for full price per core subscriptions. Your core count and bundle scope still decide what you pay.

When did VMware perpetual licenses reach end of life?

VMware stopped selling perpetual licenses and support renewals on December 11, 2023. That was 19 days after Broadcom closed the acquisition on November 22, 2023, at roughly $69 billion including debt. Thousands of SKUs were folded into two subscriptions, VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) and vSphere Foundation (VVF), plus a short list of add ons.

Existing support contracts ran to their end date but could not be renewed. From that point every new purchase became a term subscription counted per physical core. The changes that followed came in waves, some of them later reversed.

What still works on a perpetual license after support ends?

The software keeps running. Broadcom's knowledge base confirms that ESXi hosts and vCenter continue to operate, and virtual machines stay up, after support expires. You lose routine patches, version upgrades and technical support, and Broadcom advises against adding hosts or attempting a major upgrade without active support.

Broadcom makes one exception: customers with expired support can still download patches for critical security alerts, rated CVSS 9.0 or higher, on supported vSphere versions, currently 8.x. Customers in this position have also received cease and desist letters, and our note on responding to a Broadcom cease and desist letter covers how to reply.

Why did the order of events matter as much as the changes?

Why did Broadcom end perpetual VMware licensing?

The reason was financial. Perpetual customers paid annual support of roughly 20 percent of the original license fee. A subscription charges for the same deployment at full price, every year, on a per core meter, so the same installed base produces several times the recurring revenue.

Three changes compound on each other. The bundle means you pay for the whole platform even where you run part of it. The core meter bills every physical core, with a floor of 16 per CPU. And the switch from perpetual to term removes the option of owning the software and paying only for support.

Is this the same approach Broadcom used at CA and Symantec?

Yes. Broadcom bought CA Technologies in 2018 and Symantec's enterprise business in 2019, and ran the same sequence at both. It concentrated sales effort on the largest accounts, cut go to market cost and raised the revenue per customer through bundling.

Both times the pricing stuck. VMware is the third run, and that history should shape your planning more than any conversation with an account manager.

What do Broadcom's results say about where pricing goes next?

They say the model is working. Broadcom reported fiscal 2025 infrastructure software revenue of $27.0 billion, up 26 percent from about $21.5 billion the year before. For scale, VMware's last full year as a standalone company brought in about $13.4 billion.

The segment also includes the CA and Symantec software lines, so the comparison is directional. It still shows the VMware conversion doing most of the work, and a vendor growing at that rate has no commercial reason to reprice.

Why waiting for the pricing to soften is the wrong bet

A common suggestion is to sign the shortest term available and hold out until Broadcom relaxes pricing under competitive pressure. We think that is a mistake. A stopgap signed on Broadcom's core count and full VCF scope becomes the base for the next quote, and each later uplift is applied to it.

Fix the base in this renewal instead. Correct the core count, cut the bundle to what you run and bring a priced alternative to the table now. A shorter term can still make sense for keeping options open, once the count and scope are right.

How does VMware per core licensing work after the switch?

You license every physical core on every host the subscription covers, with a minimum of 16 cores per CPU. A two socket host running 8 core processors therefore licenses as 32 cores, double its physical count. At the other end, dense modern processors multiply the bill because every extra core is billed.

Under the old per socket model, a refresh to denser chips did not change the VMware line. Now every server purchase has a licensing consequence. The core licensing guide covers the counting rules host by host.

The floor also rewards consolidation. Say you run 10 older hosts with two 8 core CPUs each: 160 physical cores, billed as 320. If the same workloads fit on 5 hosts with two 16 core CPUs, you still have 160 physical cores, and the licensed count falls to 160, half the previous figure.

How does the vSAN entitlement change the VCF or VVF choice?

Storage rides the same meter. VCF includes 1 TiB of vSAN capacity per licensed core, while vSphere Foundation includes 0.25 TiB per core. For clusters that store heavily on vSAN, the storage line can flip the edition comparison, so model raw capacity before you pick a tier.

Take a hypothetical cluster of 10 hosts with two 16 core CPUs each, 320 licensed cores. VCF brings 320 TiB of vSAN entitlement and VVF brings 80 TiB. At 200 TiB of raw vSAN capacity, VVF leaves you 120 TiB short, bought as add on capacity. On external storage, VVF usually wins.

Do smaller VMware editions still exist?

Yes, but with limits. vSphere Standard and vSphere Foundation remain for customers who need core virtualization without the full VCF stack. Broadcom's knowledge base states that vSphere Standard and Enterprise Plus are supported only up to version 8 Update 3, and vSphere 9 features are available only with VVF 9.0 and VCF 9.0.

The free ESXi hypervisor, withdrawn in early 2024, came back with ESXi 8.0 Update 3e for standalone hosts. The VCF components guide shows what each tier contains, so you can compare it with what you deploy.

How much have VMware renewal costs risen under Broadcom?

Across our benchmarks, renewal quotes landed 2 to 5 times above the customer's prior perpetual support cost. Most of the increase came from scope rather than rate: VCF packages compute, storage, networking and management into one subscription. The bundle included products that 30 to 50 percent of customers did not use.

You pay for the full bundle, whichever modules you run. That is why the two controls still in your hands, right sizing the core count and trimming the bundle, recovered 15 to 35 percent of the quote in the renewals we worked on.

What does that look like on a real budget line?

The worked example below is hypothetical, built from those ranges. It starts with perpetual licenses that originally cost $1,000,000, supported at 20 percent a year.

Over a three year term, the gap between accepting the $600,000 quote and settling at $390,000 to $510,000 is $270,000 to $630,000. Any annual uplift then compounds on whichever base you sign, which is why the first renewal sets the cost of every one after it.

What have we seen in VMware renewals in 2024 and 2025?

I benchmarked roughly 25 to 35 VMware renewals between 2024 and 2025. In every one, the switch to subscription and the VCF bundle drove the increase. Unit price was a smaller factor than what was being counted and what was being bundled.

• The first quote was an opening position. The customers who recovered part of the quote were the ones who answered it with a host by host core count and a map of deployed components.
• Alternatives moved the price more than argument did. A costed plan to move part of the workload elsewhere changed quotes further than any request for a better discount.
• Accepting the first number was expensive twice. Customers who treated the quote as the new price paid it, and then paid the uplift on it at the next anniversary.
• Relationships did not change the number. What changed it was structural: the core count mapped, the bundle challenged, the alternatives priced and the terms held until they appeared in the order form.

This is a financial conversion by a company that has run it twice before, so the price will not come back down on its own.

Which VMware renewal costs can you still control?

You control four things: the core count, the bundle scope, the storage tier and how credible your alternative is. Each needs work months before the renewal date, because the account team builds its quote from its own records if you do not send yours.

How do you check your own VMware core count and usage?

• Broadcom's License Counting PowerCLI tool. The FoundationCoreAndTiBUsage.psm1 module, documented in Broadcom's knowledge base, reports licensed cores per host and vSAN TiB for a vCenter. A second module covers several vCenters at once. Run it before the account team does.
• RVTools, vHost tab. Lists every host with its sockets and cores per CPU, enough to apply the 16 core floor in a spreadsheet.
• vCenter vSAN capacity view. Shows raw capacity per cluster, the number to test against 1 TiB or 0.25 TiB per core.
• A deployed component map. List which clusters run NSX, Aria Operations or vSAN in production. Anything in the VCF bundle that runs nowhere is the case for pricing VVF or vSphere Standard on those clusters.

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

• "Perpetual is gone, so this is the price." The license model is fixed. The core count, the edition per cluster and the term are not, so send your corrected count and ask for a requote.
• "You need VCF to get vSphere 9." VVF 9.0 also includes vSphere 9, so the upgrade alone does not justify the full stack. Check the general support date for your current 8.x release and decide whether you need 9 in this term at all. Our note on vSphere 9 upgrade timing covers that trade.
• "There is a 72 core minimum order." Ask where it appears in the contract terms. The documented rule is 16 cores per CPU, and the reported 72 core minimum was walked back after customers objected.
• "Your support has expired, so any patch you installed is unlicensed." Check the patch dates against your support end date first. Critical security patches for supported vSphere versions are available to expired contracts under Broadcom's own policy, so separate those from the rest before you reply.

What contract terms should you ask for?

• A cap on renewal uplift. Fixes the ceiling on the next cycle, so a good first price is not undone at the next anniversary. See our guide to price caps in Broadcom contracts.
• A price hold on added cores. Growth during the term is billed at the agreed rate, not a fresh list price.
• Edition choice per cluster. VCF where you run the stack, VVF or vSphere Standard where you do not, written into the order.
• The agreed core schedule attached to the order form. The next renewal then starts from your host by host count instead of Broadcom's records.
• Reduction rights at renewal. The right to drop cores and clusters you retire or migrate, without penalty.

What are the options if you still hold perpetual licenses?

There are four: run the current versions frozen, move to third party support, convert to subscription, or migrate some or all workloads. Many customers combine two, converting core clusters while migrating a slice. The guide to perpetual license options in 2026 sets out what each allows, and our Hyper-V and VMware comparison prices the most common alternative.

What to do next

1. Count every host against the 16 core floor. Flag low core hosts and dense hosts before you see a quote.
2. Map deployed components against the VCF bundle. Every cluster that runs no NSX, no Aria tools and no vSAN is a candidate for VVF or vSphere Standard, and the list is your case for a smaller quote.
3. Model vSAN capacity against the per core entitlement. Compare raw TiB per cluster with 1 TiB per VCF core and 0.25 TiB per VVF core before choosing a tier.
4. Price at least one alternative in full. Include migration effort and the new platform's licensing.
5. Hold every reported policy as negotiable until it is on the order form. Refresh quotes every quarter and put the price cap, core schedule and reduction rights in writing.
6. Get independent help if the renewal is within 12 months. Our Broadcom VMware advisory team runs the core count, bundle review and negotiation with you.

Frequently asked questions