VMware Workstation Pro 25H2: Free Download & Setup Guide

What "Free" Means Here — the Licensing, Plainly

Workstation Pro used to be a paid product with a licence key. Broadcom, which now owns VMware, made it free for personal use — you no longer buy a licence or enter a key to run the current 25H2 build. If you plan to deploy it across an office or for commercial work, check Broadcom's current licensing terms on the portal first, because the terms that apply to organisations are stated there and Broadcom can change them.

Create a Free Broadcom Account First

The installer lives inside the Broadcom Support Portal, and Broadcom asks you to sign in before downloading. Registration is free and takes a few minutes: open the portal, register with your email, and complete the short account profile step — Broadcom shows a profile and compliance step before the first download is enabled. Stay signed in for the next step.

support.broadcom.com

Download Workstation Pro 25H2 from the Portal

Signed in, go to the VMware Workstation Pro product downloads and pick the 25H2 release for your host — the Windows installer if your PC runs Windows. Accept the download terms and save the installer file. Check that the file name and size match what the portal page shows, and keep the installer — you will reuse it if you ever reinstall.

Install It — No Licence Key Anywhere

Run the downloaded installer with administrator rights and follow the wizard, accepting the defaults. The honest headline of this video: the current Workstation Pro installer does not ask for a licence key at all. Restart the PC if the installer asks — it installs virtual network drivers that need the restart.

Create Your First Virtual Machine

Open Workstation Pro and choose Create a New Virtual Machine. The Typical wizard is fine for a first VM: point it at your operating system ISO file, give the VM a name and a folder on a drive with real free space. Set memory to about half your PC's RAM (on a 16 GB host, 8192 MB is a sensible example) and 2 to 4 processor cores. Create a dynamically growing virtual disk — 80 to 100 GB for Windows 11 — so it only takes space as the guest grows. For Windows 11, keep the UEFI firmware and TPM 2.0 options the wizard offers, or the Windows installer will refuse to proceed.

Install the Guest OS, Then VMware Tools — in That Order

Power on the VM and install Windows or Linux from the ISO exactly as you would on a real PC. The moment the desktop appears, do the finishing step most beginners skip: VMware Tools. In the Workstation menu, open VM and then Install VMware Tools; inside the guest, run the Tools setup from the mounted drive and restart the VM. On Linux guests, the distribution's own open-vm-tools package does the same job — on Debian and Ubuntu guests it installs like this:

sudo apt install open-vm-tools

Tools is what gives you smooth window resizing, copy and paste between host and guest, drag and drop of files, and the proper display driver. Without it, every VM feels broken — with it, the VM feels like a real second PC.