Load balancing across hosts in a computer system is triggered based on pairwise comparisons of resource utilization at different host. A method for load balancing across hosts includes the steps of determining a resource utilization difference between first and second hosts, wherein the first host has a higher resource utilization than the second host, comparing the resource utilization difference against a threshold difference, and upon determining that the resource utilization difference exceeds the threshold difference, selecting a workload executing in the first host for migration to the second host.