CLion vs. Microsoft Visual Studio Code

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
CLion
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
JetBrains offers CLion, a cross-platform IDE for C and C+.
$9.90
per month per user
Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Score 9.3 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft offers Visual Studio Code, an open source text editor that supports code editing, debugging, IntelliSense syntax highlighting, and other features.
$0
Pricing
CLionMicrosoft Visual Studio Code
Editions & Modules
CLion for Individuals
$99
per year per user
CLion for Organizations
$229
per year per user
All Products Pack for Individuals
$289
per year per user
All Products Pack for Organizations
$779
per year per user
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
CLionMicrosoft Visual Studio Code
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
CLionMicrosoft Visual Studio Code
Considered Both Products
CLion
Chose CLion
CLion offers the most user-friendly UI, the latest libraries, smaller-sized installation, smart code completion, an updated GNU compiler, and free student license.
Chose CLion
Most IDEs are huge both in disk and memory which causes it to run slow, where CLion is much smaller and faster. That's what I loved about CLion, compared to its rivals. Not to mention its extensive abilities and functions in the debugging process, thanks to which, we were able …
Chose CLion
Visual Studio is the "standard" IDE most people use. It's expensive but generally worth the cost. Where CLion comes into play, people are less concerned with using the Microsoft solution and are open to another party providing them the key IDE resource they need. It's taking a …
Chose CLion
First thing it has better UI. When it comes to usability CLion is the best.
Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Microsoft Visual Studio Code's strength, compared to its rivals/alternatives, is its size, efficiency, compatibility, portability, and cross-language ability. Some IDEs are focused on one or two programming languages, containing a lot of libraries, compilers, and packages but …
Best Alternatives
CLionMicrosoft Visual Studio Code
Small Businesses
Visual Studio
Visual Studio
Score 8.8 out of 10
BBEdit
BBEdit
Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Visual Studio
Visual Studio
Score 8.8 out of 10
Vim
Vim
Score 9.4 out of 10
Enterprises
Visual Studio
Visual Studio
Score 8.8 out of 10
Vim
Vim
Score 9.4 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
CLionMicrosoft Visual Studio Code
Likelihood to Recommend
8.1
(4 ratings)
8.7
(91 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(1 ratings)
9.4
(2 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(1 ratings)
9.1
(8 ratings)
Support Rating
8.1
(3 ratings)
9.7
(23 ratings)
User Testimonials
CLionMicrosoft Visual Studio Code
Likelihood to Recommend
JetBrains
It's a great fit if you’re looking for a user-friendly C++ IDE; comfortable with using Vim; looking for a fast, intuitive UI; or teaching your students C/C++. It wouldn’t be a good fit if you’re more comfortable with command-line based IDEs or planning to code in multiple languages, as it only supports C and C++.
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Microsoft
As a general workhorse IDE, Microsoft Visual Studio Codee is unmatched. Building on the early success of applications such as Atom, it has long been the standard for electron based IDEs. It can be outshone using IDEs that are dedicated to particular platforms, such as Microsoft Visual Studio Code for .net and the Jetbrains IDEs for Java, Python and others. For remote collaborative development, something like Zed is ahead of VSCode live share, which can be quite flakey.
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Pros
JetBrains
  • Software development
  • IDE
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Microsoft
  • Integrate with the git repository very well.
  • Integrated copilot chat is very helpful to write code snippets and helps beginners to start with coding and development.
  • Great library of available extensions is one of the best features in Microsoft Visual Studio Code.
  • Dedicated Testing option to configure pytest and others are quite handy to use.
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Cons
JetBrains
  • JetBrains, the company that created and maintains CLion, is located primarily in Russia. While that doesn't concern me it does create worries for some people.
  • No real cons. The product is great and the support is equally excellent.
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Microsoft
  • The customization of key combinations should be more accessible and easier to change
  • The auxiliary panels could be minimized or as floating tabs which are displayed when you click on them
  • A monitoring panel of resources used by Microsoft Visual Studio Code or plugins and extensions would help a lot to be able to detect any malfunction of these
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Likelihood to Renew
JetBrains
It has the features that I need for my coding
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Microsoft
Solid tool that provides everything you need to develop most types of applications. The only reason not a 10 is that if you are doing large distributed teams on Enterprise level, Professional does provide more tools to support that and would be worth the cost.
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Usability
JetBrains
CLion does everything I ask it to do. For me, Unreal Engine 4 compatibility was essential and Epic Game and JetBrains delivered a solid alternative to spending a huge amount of money on the "standard" IDE for game development on Windows. The user interface is sharp and modern without all of the silly frills many software suites now employ. It integrates well with source control systems we use and also works well, as expected, with other JetBrains development tools and assistants.
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Microsoft
Microsoft Visual Studio Code earns a 10 for its exceptional balance of power and simplicity. Its intuitive interface, robust extension ecosystem, and integrated terminal streamline development. With seamless Git integration and highly customizable settings, it adapts perfectly to any workflow, making complex coding tasks feel effortless for beginners and experts alike.
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Reliability and Availability
JetBrains
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Overall, Microsoft Visual Studio Code is pretty reliable. Every so often, though, the app will experience an unexplained crash. Since it is a stand-alone app, connectivity or service issues don't occur in my experience. Restarting the app seems to always get around the problem, but I do make sure to save and backup current work.
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Performance
JetBrains
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Microsoft Visual Studio Code is pretty snappy in performance terms. It launches quickly, and tasks are performed quickly. I don't have a lot of integrations other than CoPilot, but I suspect that if the integration partner is provisioned appropriately that any performance impact would be pretty minimal. It doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles (unless you start adding plugins left and right).
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Support Rating
JetBrains
I am giving it a 9 out of 10 because I did not even need official support from the CLion team but rather, every time I came across a problem, I have been able to solve it within the community itself. This is so precious that you don't even need the help of the program's development/support team. There's a huge community of users that backs you up.
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Microsoft
Active development means filing a bug on the GitHub repo typically gets you a response within 4 days. There are plugins for almost everything you need, whether it be linting, Vim emulation, even language servers (which I use to code in Scala). There is well-maintained official documentation. The only thing missing is forums. The closest thing is GitHub issues, which typically has the answers but is hard to sift through -- there are currently 78k issues.
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Alternatives Considered
JetBrains
First thing it has better UI. When it comes to usability CLion is the best
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Microsoft
Visual Studio Code stacks up nicely against Visual Studio because of the price and because it can be installed without admin rights. We don't exclusively use Visual Studio Code, but rather use Visual Studio and Visual Studio code depending on the project and which version of source control the given project is wired up to.
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Scalability
JetBrains
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
It is easily deployed with our Jamf Pro instance. There is actually very little setup involved in getting the app deployed, and it is fairly well self-contained and does not deploy a large amount of associated files. However, it is not particularly conducive to large project, multi-developer/department projects that involve some form of central integration.
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Return on Investment
JetBrains
  • CLion helped us to speed up our development.
  • Version control support reduced many problems like merge conflicts.
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Microsoft
  • Saves money by replacing suites of tools such as Visual Studio, IntelliJ, etc.
  • Speeds development time and developer environment setup time
  • Strengthens code quality with integrated autoformatting and linting
  • Strengths Git practices by keeping version control tightly connected with the code
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ScreenShots