It's not really about performance. Imagine comparing AirDrop to a SAN on the basis both provide file sharing functionality. The topic wouldn't be performance, it'd be how they have entirely different use case goals that just happen to both end up using file sharing as one part in achieving that goal.

In the case of ESXi it's about the clustering, filesystem/network virtualization, management and orchestration for hundreds of servers, disaster recovery, enterprise security/software integrations, and so on. That VirtualBox requires a client OS is just a footnote in the comparison of functionality.

Parallels and virtualbox are designed for the end user ad hoc running a few VMs on their client system. The VMWare equivalent was VmWare Workstation, not ESX. ESX, Proxmox etc. are about orchestrating fleets of VMs running on clusters of hardware