As of early 2024, the "Free Edition" of ESXi (which had a 2-CPU limit) has been officially discontinued. Why People Search GitHub for Keys
VMware vSphere was released as part of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0 on June 17, 2025. While GitHub repositories and Gists frequently circulate license keys for older versions (like vSphere 6, 7, and 8), finding functional "free" keys for version 9 is significantly more difficult due to radical changes in Broadcom's licensing infrastructure. The Current State of ESXi 9 Licensing vmware esxi 9 license key github work