For production environments, you must obtain a legitimate commercial subscription from Broadcom or an authorized partner. For home labs, learning, and testing, you have excellent and completely legal options: is perfect for basic needs, and a VMUG Advantage membership is the ultimate tool for professionals seeking a full-featured experience.
It allows you to learn the software legally with full access to product updates and community support. Best Practices for Securing Your ESXi Environment
Pirated or unauthorized installations are barred from receiving critical security updates and patches from Broadcom, leaving production environments exposed to known exploits. vmware esxi 9 license key github link
Broadcom still provides options for users to test or use the hypervisor without an enterprise contract:
While various GitHub repositories often list "curated collections" of keys for older versions (like ESXi 6.7, 7.0, or 8.0), these are generally intended for educational and non-commercial use Announcing VMware vSphere Foundation 9.0 - VMware Blogs For production environments, you must obtain a legitimate
Disclaimer: This article does not provide, link to, or encourage the use of pirated or leaked software keys. If you want, I can help you find: to ESXi for home labs (e.g., Proxmox)
For enthusiasts and "homelabbers," this is the gold standard for legal keys. Approximately $200/year. Best Practices for Securing Your ESXi Environment Pirated
This report examines the landscape of VMware ESXi 9.0 following its release in
Starting with VMware vSphere 9.0 , Broadcom has fundamentally changed the licensing model for ESXi. The traditional 25-character license keys used in previous versions (like 6.x, 7.x, and 8.x) have been replaced by subscription-based license files Broadcom support portal Critical Licensing Changes in ESXi 9.0 No More Manual Keys
: Most high-profile GitHub repositories that previously hosted license keys (e.g., ayebrian/vmware.md ) have removed them in accordance with GitHub’s Terms of Service.
For businesses, licenses are now managed through the Broadcom Support Portal. Broadcom has transitioned to a .