vagrant
by hashicorp
Vagrant is a command-line tool that builds and manages repeatable development environments using a simple configuration file. It lets you run the same setup on virtual machines, containers or cloud services, on Windows, Mac or Linux.
- Stars
- 27.2k
- Licence
- BUSL
- Runs on
- Your computer
- Setup
- Moderate
- Language
- Ruby
- Age
- 6126 days
What you can do with it
- Spin up a ready-made virtual machine with a couple of commands
- Share one configuration file so everyone on a team has the same development setup
- Test software on different operating systems using VirtualBox, VMware, Docker or cloud providers
Make money with it
A freelancer could offer packaged, reproducible development environment setups to clients or small teams as a paid service.
An idea, not financial advice. Check the licence before charging for anything built on it.
Ways a business could use it
- Give freelancers and contractors an identical, disposable development environment for each client project, cutting setup time
- Test websites or software on several operating systems locally instead of paying for cloud test machines
Can you use it commercially?
Not open source (BUSL licence). Usually free to use for your own business, but you can't resell it or offer it as a hosted service. Read the licence.
Not legal advice. Read the project's licence file before building a product on it.
Getting it running
Install a virtualisation provider such as VirtualBox, download the Vagrant package for your operating system, then run "vagrant init" and "vagrant up".
Follow the official instructions in the project README.
Things to check
- Licence is not clearly stated in the repository data (listed as NOASSERTION); HashiCorp's licence may restrict some commercial uses, so check it
- HCP Vagrant, the hosted service, is being deprecated from November 2026, though the command-line tool is unaffected
- Needs a separate virtualisation provider, and some may have their own licence terms
Checked 29 Oct 2026. Summary drafted by AI from the project's README.
