Two of the six run on a Mac. The rest want you to run Windows.

This is the shortest buying question in the category and the one most likely to be answered wrongly by a sales conversation, because the honest answer is usually “not really, but here is a way around it” and that is not what gets said in a first call.

So we went to each publisher’s own system requirements, downloads and documentation pages, and wrote down what they state. Not a third party listing, not a comparison site, and not an answer given to us: the page the company publishes about its own product, with the day it was read.

Of the six products assessed here, two run natively on macOS. One more answers the question with a browser. Three are Windows, and say so.

The two that do

AnyLogic is the widest platform position in this comparison and it is not close. Its own downloads and editions documentation list Windows, macOS and Linux, and there is a cloud tier alongside the desktop application. If a team is genuinely mixed, and particularly if anyone is on Linux, this is the only product here that does not require a conversation about it.

ProcessModel publishes Windows and macOS on its own technical page. There is no Linux build and nothing that runs in a browser, so the reach is narrower than AnyLogic’s, but for the specific question a Mac user is asking, it is a native application rather than an arrangement.

Both were read on 15 August 2026 and both facts are in the capability table at the foot of this page, alongside every other platform row.

The browser answer, and what it is

Simul8 has no native macOS application. What it has instead is a browser version carrying the same interface as the desktop product, described on its own site, read on 14 August 2026. The publisher’s system requirements also name virtualization software as a way to run the desktop product on a Mac. The browser version is a real answer to “can I use this on a Mac” and it is not the same answer as a native application.

The difference matters, because the two get conflated in demonstrations.

What a browser version genuinely gives you: the product opens on any machine with a browser, including a Mac, a locked down corporate laptop, and a machine belonging to somebody who will never install anything. For a reviewer, a stakeholder or an occasional modeler, that is frequently better than a native application, because there is nothing to procure and nothing to install.

What it does not give you: local files behaving like local files, predictable performance on a long run, or independence from a network connection. Whether those matter depends on how you work, and the honest test is to ask how the vendor expects a heavy user to work day to day. If the answer is the desktop application, then the browser version is the light path and a Mac user is on the light path permanently.

The three that are Windows, and their own advice

Bizagi Modeler is a Windows desktop application. Its own frequently asked questions, read on 7 October 2026, say that Mac OS is not currently supported and that the desktop application can be run through a virtual machine. When this guide was first written the published pages did not say either way, and the record then read “not stated”. The publisher now says it, so the record says no.

Arena is Windows only: no macOS build, no Linux, no browser version and no cloud tier of any kind. Its published system requirements describe a desktop installation and, read again on 7 October 2026, name Windows 10, Windows 11 and Windows Server 2016 and nothing else. The publisher’s frequently asked questions say it is not officially supported or tested on a Mac, and note only that users have reported running it through Windows emulation packages.

FlexSim is also Windows only, and it is the one that states the workaround in its own words. Asked directly about running on a Mac, the answer in the publisher’s own community forum, read on 14 August 2026, is to dual boot or run Windows in a virtual machine. That is not a criticism of the product, and it is not a leak: it is the publisher answering the question honestly on its own site, which is more than most of this category does.

We quote it because it is the clearest statement anywhere in this comparison of what the category actually expects of a Mac user, and because it is checkable in one click.

What virtualising really costs

The workaround works. Both routes are well established, and plenty of people in this field do exactly that. What is worth knowing before you commit is that the cost is not mainly the money.

There is a license. Running Windows in a virtual machine or on a second partition means holding a Windows license for it. That is a modest cost against a simulation license and it is not zero, and it is rarely mentioned in the meeting where the decision is made.

There is a virtualisation product, which on current Apple hardware means a paid one for most people, and which is another renewal, another vendor and another compatibility surface.

There is the graphics question. The products that lean hardest on visual output are the ones with the most demanding graphics requirements, and virtualised graphics is the part of this arrangement most likely to disappoint. Arena’s own requirements name a dedicated graphics card. FlexSim’s entire positioning is a three dimensional view. Those are precisely the two you would least want to run through a virtualisation layer, and they are the two that require it.

And there is the support conversation. This is the real cost. When something misbehaves, the question of whose problem it is now has two vendors in it, and neither of them supports the other’s configuration. A defect that would have taken one call takes three, and the answer is sometimes that the configuration is not supported at all.

None of that makes virtualising the wrong choice. It makes it a choice with a running cost, and the running cost belongs in the comparison rather than in the first month of ownership.

What to ask, and what to accept

Ask for the system requirements page, not an answer. “It works on a Mac” and “we publish macOS system requirements” are different claims, and only one of them survives a support ticket. If the page does not name macOS, the answer is no, whatever anyone said in the call.

Ask whether the browser version is the product or a viewer. Some browser offerings in this category are the whole application and some are a way to look at somebody else’s model. The difference decides whether a Mac user is a modeler or an audience.

Ask what is supported, not what is possible. Almost anything is possible under virtualisation. What matters is what the vendor will help you with when it stops working.

And treat this as a filter rather than a tiebreak. Platform is the cheapest criterion to check and it removes products from a shortlist faster than any other, which is why it goes first. A team that spends three weeks evaluating capability before discovering that half the shortlist does not run on half the machines has spent the three weeks badly.

The limit of this piece

Six products, checked against their publishers’ own pages, on the dates recorded in the table below. The category is larger than six and this assessment will grow, so this piece is a snapshot with its date on it rather than a survey of everything sold.

Two things it does not claim. It does not claim that a product with no macOS build is a worse product, because for a buyer whose whole organization is on Windows the row is worth nothing. And where the published sources do not establish support, the table reads “not stated”.