Estimate your VMware licensing cost under Broadcom per core pricing, including the 16 core per CPU minimum and the vSphere Standard 512 core cap, then see what right sizing the bundle or a well timed renewal could recover. No sign up, nothing leaves your browser.
C4C negotiates VMware renewals on the customer’s side. We check your quote against what you actually run, cut what you don’t need, and negotiate with Broadcom for you, or plan the move when leaving is genuinely cheaper.
Last updated October 2026
Broadcom sells VMware per core on subscription. Indicative public list prices are around $400 per core per year for VMware Cloud Foundation, around $155 for vSphere Foundation and around $55 for vSphere Standard. Every CPU is billed at a minimum of 16 cores, and vSphere Standard stops at 512 cores. These are Broadcom’s standard rules, and some of them can be softened in negotiation. What you actually pay depends on discount, term and region. See the full price table or put your own estate into the calculator below.
Enter your VMware estate. The calculator runs entirely in your browser, so none of these figures are sent anywhere unless you ask us to email you the estimate.
Defaults are indicative public list estimates in USD per core per year. For a real picture, replace them with the per core rate on your own quote and set the discount above to nil. Non USD totals use an indicative conversion of 1 USD to 0.75 GBP or 0.87 EUR.
A note on availability. Broadcom has withdrawn vSphere Foundation (VVF) in some regions, so the VVF option here may not be something you can actually license where you are. If VVF is the tier on your quote, or the one you were hoping to move to, drop us a line and we will confirm what is available to you and what it changes for your renewal.
Paid by a fixed fee, a share of the saving or the services involved, never a margin on VMware licences. More on our VMware renewal support.
Get your quote checkedKeep this estimate. We will email it to you with the three things to check before you sign.
The calculator gives you a direction. A short conversation gives you the answer. Tell us what you run and when the renewal lands, and we will tell you what is negotiable, whether the bundle fits what you actually use, and what your timing is worth, the way we used to work it out from the vendor side. A straight answer within one working day, free, and if there is nothing to gain we will tell you that too.
How we are paid. It depends on the engagement: a fixed fee, a share of the saving we achieve, or professional services such as a licence audit or a migration. Never a margin on VMware licences.
We negotiated a Fortune 500 medical distributor’s Broadcom renewal to 56 percent below the quote, saving more than £1 million, and the method is the same at any scale. Read the case study. Engage early, before the renewal clock takes your leverage.
Prefer email? Write to us at hello@c4cgroup.co.uk.
Broadcom licenses VMware per core on subscription, not per CPU or per host, and two rules shape the bill. There is a minimum of 16 cores for every physical CPU, so a CPU with fewer than 16 cores is still charged as 16. And vSphere Standard is available only up to 512 cores, above which you must use vSphere Foundation or VMware Cloud Foundation. A 72 core minimum order introduced in 2025 has since been dropped. These are Broadcom’s standard rules, and some of them can be softened in negotiation.
The billable core count is your hosts multiplied by CPUs per host multiplied by the greater of your cores per CPU or 16. That count is multiplied by the per core annual price of your bundle, reduced by any discount, and multiplied by the term.
The part most quotes gloss over is the bundle. The three tiers differ enormously:
The right sizing insight in the results shows the difference between the bundle you have been quoted and the tiers beneath it. If your workloads do not use the networking and full storage capabilities VCF brings, you may be paying a large premium for capability you will never deploy. That gap is exactly what an independent review sets out to confirm and recover.
There is a catch the tiers hide, though. vSphere Standard is capped at 512 cores, and Broadcom has withdrawn vSphere Foundation in some regions, so for a larger estate the cheaper tiers are frequently not genuinely available. Many organisations find they are pushed to VMware Cloud Foundation whether the full suite fits their workloads or not. When you cannot right size the bundle, two levers remain, and both are time sensitive: the discount you negotiate, and whether you renew or exit. That is why engaging before the renewal clock starts is the single most important decision on this page. And if the numbers make leaving worth a look, our comparison of VMware alternatives covers every serious option, including the case for staying.
Broadcom does not publish a universal price list, but the indicative public list figures widely reported for the three subscription tiers are set out below, quoted per core per year. Discount, region, term and volume move the real number considerably, and the calculator above lets you apply your own discount and switch to pounds or euros.
| Bundle | Indicative list price, USD per core / year |
|---|---|
| VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) | around $400 |
| vSphere Foundation (VVF) | around $155 |
| vSphere Standard | around $55 |
To put those figures in context, three hosts with two 16 core CPUs each come to 96 billable cores. At the list prices above that is roughly $5,280 a year on vSphere Standard, $14,880 on vSphere Foundation and $38,400 on VMware Cloud Foundation, before any discount. The gap between the tiers is why the bundle on your quote matters as much as the discount.
vSphere is no longer sold as a standalone perpetual product. It comes as vSphere Standard, the lowest cost tier at around $55 per core per year and capped at 512 cores, or inside vSphere Foundation and VMware Cloud Foundation. Broadcom has withdrawn vSphere Foundation in some regions, so for a larger estate the realistic choice is often vSphere Standard below the cap or VMware Cloud Foundation above it.
Reviewed July 2026. These are indicative list figures, not a quote. VVF has been withdrawn in some regions, and vSphere Standard is capped at 512 cores, so the tier you can actually license is not always the one you would choose.
No. C4C does not resell VMware licences, so we take no margin on your renewal. We are paid for the work itself, depending on the engagement: a fixed fee, a share of the saving we achieve, or professional services such as a licence audit or a migration. That keeps our advice on the buyer's side, including when the right answer is to stay on VMware and renegotiate.
Broadcom licenses VMware per core on subscription, not per CPU or per host. The billable core count is your number of hosts multiplied by CPUs per host multiplied by the greater of your actual cores per CPU or 16. That figure is then multiplied by the per core annual price of the bundle, and by the term length.
Broadcom bills a minimum of 16 cores for every physical CPU. If a CPU has fewer than 16 cores, you are still charged as if it had 16. On smaller hosts this can inflate the bill well beyond the actual core count.
Not any more. A 72 core minimum order was introduced in 2025 and has since been dropped, so the floor that applies is 16 cores per CPU. If a quote still carries a 72 core line, challenge it. Like the other rules, minimums can sometimes be softened in negotiation.
Yes. vSphere Standard is available up to 512 cores. Environments above 512 billable cores cannot be licensed on vSphere Standard and must use vSphere Foundation or VMware Cloud Foundation.
Broadcom has withdrawn vSphere Foundation in some regions, so it may not be available to license where you are. If your quote names VVF, or you were hoping to move to it, speak to us and we will confirm what you can actually buy and how it affects the numbers.
Broadcom does not publish a universal price list, but indicative public list figures are widely reported at around 400 US dollars per core per year for VMware Cloud Foundation, around 155 for vSphere Foundation, and around 55 for vSphere Standard. What you actually pay depends on your discount, region, term and volume, so use the calculator above with your own quote for a realistic figure.
vSphere Standard is the lowest cost VMware tier, at an indicative list price of around 55 US dollars per core per year, and is available up to 512 cores. Above that, vSphere comes as part of vSphere Foundation, at around 155 per core where it is still offered, or VMware Cloud Foundation, at around 400. The 16 core per CPU minimum applies to all of them.
Broadcom does not publish a universal public price list. The figures on this page are indicative list prices widely reported for 2026, reviewed in July 2026. Your real price depends on the discount, term, region and partner on your quote, which is why the calculator lets you replace the defaults with your own per core rate.
Often yes. Right sizing the bundle to the features you actually run, confirming real core utilisation, negotiating the discount, and choosing the correct term can recover meaningful cost. An independent audit before signing is the highest leverage step. Our guide to reducing your VMware renewal after Broadcom covers each lever, and why starting early matters most.