Kasm Workspaces Alternatives for Self-Hosted VDI and DaaS

Kasm Workspaces is alive and still sold. It streams desktops, single apps and isolated browsers out of Docker containers into a browser tab. Its features matrix lists a free Community edition for individuals, nonprofits and testing, capped at 5 concurrent sessions. The Basic, Essentials and Premier tiers above it carry no price, only a quote form.

So most people looking for a replacement hit one of two walls: the session cap, or a sales call before they know the cost. The first two picks below are free and self-hosted. Amazon's Secure Browser covers the browser isolation half of Kasm. The rest are full VDI or desktop-as-a-service platforms for when you outgrow containers.

Three of the big names have changed hands. VMware Horizon is now Omnissa Horizon, after KKR closed its purchase on July 1, 2024. Citrix belongs to Cloud Software Group. Frame, once part of Nutanix, was bought by Dizzion in June 2023 and now sells as Dizzion DaaS.

Prices below are as of November 6, 2026. Our method is on How we review tools.

Quick comparison

Apache Guacamole

Apache Guacamole is a clientless remote desktop gateway. You install it once on a server, and people open existing machines over VNC, RDP or SSH from a browser tab with no plugin. Version 1.6.0 shipped on June 22, 2025, under the Apache License 2.0.

The difference from Kasm is that Guacamole never creates a desktop. It has no container images, no throwaway sessions and no isolated browser. It only brokers the login and the stream to Windows or Linux hosts you already run. The upside is weight: in a December 2024 r/selfhosted thread, one commenter said Guacamole takes about half a minute to set up and called Kasm the heavier install.

Best for: Teams and home labs that need free browser access to Windows and Linux machines they already own, with no session cap.

Pricing:

• Free and open source (Apache License 2.0).
• No paid edition from the Apache project. Your only cost is the server it runs on.

Watch out for:

• The poster in the same Reddit thread says the shared clipboard broke in Firefox, and that Guacamole does not use the client's GPU, so GPU-accelerated Linux desktops over VNC lag.

Official site: Apache Guacamole.

Webtop (LinuxServer.io)

Closest in spirit to a Kasm desktop workspace, Webtop is a full Linux desktop packed into one Docker container. You choose Alpine, Arch, Debian, Fedora or Ubuntu, and XFCE, MATE, KDE, i3 or LXQt (LXQt on Ubuntu only). It serves the desktop on port 3000 over HTTP behind a proxy, or on port 3001 over HTTPS.

The streaming layer has changed twice. LinuxServer.io rebased its images on KasmVNC in March 2023, then moved every image to Selkies on June 17, 2025, and dropped the Openbox and IceWM flavours along the way. Intel and AMD GPUs pass through with --device /dev/dri. Nvidia needs host driver 580 or newer and is not offered on Alpine images.

Best for: Self-hosters who want a single persistent or disposable Linux desktop in a browser without running a Kasm control plane.

Pricing:

• Free image published by LinuxServer.io.
• No paid tier or licence fee.

Watch out for:

• The image docs say there is no authentication by default, and the web terminal has passwordless sudo, so anyone who reaches the page can get root in the container. Put it behind a reverse proxy with a real login before exposing it.

Official site: Webtop (LinuxServer.io).

Amazon WorkSpaces

AWS splits Kasm's job across several products. WorkSpaces Secure Browser is the isolation piece: users open a locked-down browser that runs in AWS, and you pay per monthly active user. WorkSpaces Personal gives each person a persistent Windows or Linux desktop, and WorkSpaces Pools hands out non-persistent Windows sessions billed by the hour.

Users who never sign in that month cost nothing on Secure Browser, and its trial covers up to 30 users free for 3 months per AWS account. On the desktop side, the free tier gives two Standard bundles with 40 combined hours a month for the first three months.

Best for: Companies that want browser isolation or cloud desktops without running any servers, and are happy to stay inside AWS.

Pricing:

• Secure Browser: $7 per monthly active user on standard.regular in US East, 200 streaming hours included, then $0.035 per hour. standard.large is $20 and standard.xlarge is $35 a month.
• AWS examples for WorkSpaces Personal: $25 a month for a Windows Value bundle and $44 for Standard (US West, Oregon).
• WorkSpaces Pools example: $0.10 per hour for Standard Windows, plus a $4.19 per user monthly RDS SAL fee.

Watch out for:

• Secure Browser bills each user at the largest instance type they used in the month, so one heavy session can move a user from $7 to $20 or $35.
• AWS publishes rates per product and region, and its WorkSpaces pricing page sends you to the AWS Pricing Calculator, so expect to model costs per region before you commit.

Official site: Amazon WorkSpaces. Our listing: Amazon WorkSpaces.

Parallels RAS

Parallels Remote Application Server publishes Windows apps and full desktops from servers you control, on premises, in a private cloud or in a hybrid setup. It also deploys straight from the Azure and AWS marketplaces and can sit on top of Azure Virtual Desktop.

Licensing is the plainest of the commercial picks. The buy page says there is one edition with every feature, counted only by concurrent users, sold as prepaid 1, 2 or 3 year subscriptions with support and upgrades included. MSPs can take the SPLA model instead, billed on peak concurrent users with nothing upfront.

Best for: IT teams replacing Kasm for Windows workloads who want a self-hosted product with no feature tiers to compare.

Pricing:

• No public price; quotes come from Parallels or a reseller.
• Concurrent-user subscription for 1, 2 or 3 years, or monthly SPLA for service providers.
• 30-day free trial.

Watch out for:

• Online purchases renew automatically by default, per the buy page, so diary the end of the term if you plan to leave.

Official site: Parallels RAS.

Azure Virtual Desktop

Microsoft hosts the broker and gateway for Azure Virtual Desktop, and you run the session hosts in your own Azure subscription. You pay for the VMs, storage and networking. Microsoft's sizing guide assumes 2 users per vCPU for Office work on multi-session Windows and 6 per vCPU for call-centre work.

For many companies the user licence is already paid. Microsoft 365 E3, E5, A3, A5, F3 and Business Premium, Windows Enterprise E3 and E5, and Windows VDA per user all include access rights. For people outside the company, Remote App Streaming adds a monthly per-user fee and bills session hosts at Linux compute rates. Azure Local runs the same service on your own hardware for a per-core fee.

Best for: Microsoft 365 companies that want Windows 11 multi-session desktops without buying another per-user licence.

Pricing:

• No access fee for employees with an eligible licence; you pay Azure compute, storage and networking.
• 1 or 3 year reserved instances save up to 72% against pay-as-you-go, per Microsoft.
• External users: a monthly per-user fee. Azure Local: a monthly fee per physical core plus a per vCPU hour charge.

Watch out for:

• Microsoft does not publish dollar amounts for the per-user and per-core fees on its pricing page, so you need the Azure calculator for a real quote.
• Windows Server desktops need RDS CALs with Software Assurance, an RDS User Subscription or an RDS SAL on top of Azure costs.

Official site: Azure Virtual Desktop.

Omnissa Horizon

VMware Horizon kept its name but changed owner. KKR closed its US$4 billion purchase of VMware's end-user computing business from Broadcom on July 1, 2024, and the product now ships as Omnissa Horizon 8.

Where Kasm runs containers, Horizon manages full virtual machines, so it needs a hypervisor or cloud capacity underneath. The product page lists vSphere, Nutanix AHV, OpenStack and Red Hat OpenShift on premises, plus Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud and Alibaba Cloud. It is sold as SaaS or term subscriptions.

Best for: Enterprises with hundreds of Windows VDI users and an existing vSphere or Nutanix cluster.

Pricing:

• No public price; quotes come through partners.
• From May 4, 2026, new purchases cost 7% more with VMware vSphere Foundation for VDI and 16% to 21% more without it. Renewals were not affected.

Watch out for:

• The May 2026 price adjustment applies to new and expansion licences, so adding seats now costs more per seat than the contract you renewed.

Official site: Omnissa Horizon. Our listing: Omnissa Horizon.

Citrix

Cloud Software Group owns Citrix. The buy page groups the products into a Citrix Platform: Citrix DaaS for apps and desktops, Citrix SecurAccess with Chrome Enterprise, SecurAccess ZTNA, Endpoint Management, NetScaler, XenServer and deviceTRUST.

The newer Platform Flex licence is bought as Flex Credits. Each worker persona burns a set number of credits per month, and persistent dedicated desktops cost extra as an add-on. It suits a company that wants one contract for desktops, device management and access control, not a handful of Linux containers.

Best for: Large organisations consolidating VDI, endpoint management and zero trust access with one vendor.

Pricing:

• No public price; contact sales or a partner.
• Platform Flex: prepaid Flex Credits consumed monthly per worker persona, with an add-on price for persistent dedicated workloads.

Watch out for:

• On-premises License Servers that use the License Activation Service must keep a port 443 link to Citrix Cloud. After 30 days without it, activations become invalid, per the licensing docs. Air-gapped sites have to ask Citrix for offline activation.

Official site: Citrix. Our listing: Citrix.

Dizzion DaaS (Frame)

Frame started inside Nutanix as a browser-first DaaS until Dizzion bought it in June 2023. Users open desktops and apps in a browser with no client, at up to 4K and 60 fps across several displays, according to its AWS Marketplace listing.

Dizzion layers managed services on top: site-to-site VPN, private network connections and SD-WAN, with PCI DSS, HIPAA/HITECH, SOC 2 Type II and GDPR readiness listed on its pricing page. Direct contracts run on prepaid Flex Credits.

Best for: Regulated teams that want someone else to run the desktops end to end, delivered only through a browser.

Pricing:

• AWS Marketplace, per VM: $1,700 per month for a 50-VM bundle on a 1-month prepaid contract, $34 per extra VM, and $0.06 per VM hour outside the contract. 12 to 36 month terms save up to 24%.
• AWS infrastructure is billed on top.
• Direct deals: prepaid Flex Credits, no public price on dizzion.com.

Watch out for:

• The smallest public package is 50 VMs, about $34 each per month before AWS costs, which is a big step up from Kasm's free 5 sessions for a small team.

Official site: Dizzion DaaS (Frame). Our listing: Dizzion DaaS (Frame).

How to choose

When to stay with Kasm Workspaces

Keep Kasm if you want disposable container sessions, isolated browsers and Linux desktops in one self-hosted console. No free pick here does all three: Guacamole only connects to hosts you already run, and Webtop is one desktop per container. The Community edition is fine for a home lab or a nonprofit that stays under 5 concurrent sessions. Past that, get a Basic or Essentials quote from Kasm before you price a full VDI platform, which costs far more to run.

Frequently asked questions