Eclipse vs. Microsoft Visual Studio

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Eclipse
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Eclipse is a free and open source integrated development environment (IDE).N/A
Visual Studio
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Visual Studio (now in the 2022 edition) is a 64-bit IDE that makes it easier to work with bigger projects and complex workloads, boasting a fluid and responsive experience for users. The IDE features IntelliCode, its automatic code completion tools that understand code context and that can complete up to a whole line at once to drive accurate and confident coding.
$45
per month
Pricing
EclipseMicrosoft Visual Studio
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Professional
$45.00
per month
Enterprise
$250.00
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
EclipseVisual Studio
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
EclipseMicrosoft Visual Studio
Considered Both Products
Eclipse
Chose Eclipse
IntelliJ is a good IDE as well. Any motivated user can't go wrong focusing on one and then deeply learning it, and it will pay off in productivity. Note of course that one is free the other is not! I find Eclipse is stronger at managing very large projects.
Chose Eclipse
Visual Studio is a better solution for larger applications and organizations. Eclipse is free and good for small companies/applications. VS also integrated well with the Microsoft environment. However, Eclipse is not tied to any environment and can be used with multiple OS …
Chose Eclipse
Eclipse stands out with its feature set, reliability, and being completely free of charge. I have previously used NetBeans but had reliability issues with it, at least on Windows version. IDEA has modern UI and is significantly more user friendly than Eclipse; however, the free …
Chose Eclipse
I think Eclipse is best for Java while the other products, for example, NetBeans, is good for PHP. Visual Studio is really good for C#. I would still say Eclipse is really good overall, but awesome for Java developers.
Chose Eclipse
First thing, Eclipse is free. So zero cost as compared to other alternatives. Eclipse has tons of tools/plugins for better development/testing, helping devs, making their lives easier.
Chose Eclipse
As I already said, Eclipse might not have all the features supported by IntelliJ. However, the variety of plugins available in Eclipse make it much flexible to work with. Another main reason to go for this product was because of price (free). Since I worked for a startup, the …
Chose Eclipse
Visual Studio Code can also be used for CDS development. It is quite lightweight and useful when developing for web environments. Eclipse however, has an ABAP environment as well as the HANA tools. This makes Eclipse (in my opinion) a better solution for a more well-rounded …
Chose Eclipse
Eclipse used to be the defacto standard for code development. But in recent years, as it has started focusing on its other products, like Orion and Che, it's core IDE (with focus on the 'I'), has seen a slowdown in its prominence. It cannot be compared to just the massive …
Chose Eclipse
The installation, adaptability, and ease of usage for Eclipse are pretty high and simple compared to some of the other products. Also, the fact that it is almost a plug and play once the connections are established and once a new user gets the hang of the system comes pretty …
Chose Eclipse
We compared Eclipse primarily with IntelliJ, and the thing we liked about Eclipse was the support for plugins which makes it really customizable. The other features that we liked were the multitasking, filtering and debugging which are very carefully designed by keeping in mind …
Chose Eclipse
The only alternative to Eclipse in the way that I require is Studio, which Eclipse blows out of the water in every respect (syntax, compiling, debugging, file management, server connections, etc). I've used many other IDEs that are much more feature-full and modern that I would …
Chose Eclipse
Eclipse hepls to create web based applications in short amount of time which helps to reduce business cost and increase the overall team performance.
Chose Eclipse
The community around Eclipse keeps the product updated and (mostly) clean of errors. There is no commercial owner of Eclipse, so innovation is top priority for the project which leads to be more open, customizable and friendly to the users. IntelliJ is a good competitor, but …
Chose Eclipse
The IDEs I listed above are good alternatives to those who are looking for very lightweight and easy-to-use IDEs. Whether it's for first-time programmers or people looking for a really simple solution, these could work for you. Sublime Text 3 specifically for lightweight users. …
Chose Eclipse
Eclipse provides the complexity necessary to trump Atom when working with Java, and is free when compared to WebStorm. NetBeans is a worthy competitor but it is all about preference.
Chose Eclipse
Very much inferior, worse tooling, slower, harder to use, worse predictive autocomplete, worse integration with package managers
Chose Eclipse
Compared to other text editors such as Emacs or Vim Eclipse wins the day. However when compared to Visual Studio I still prefer Visual Studio; perhaps because I have been using it primarily for the past 9 years.
Chose Eclipse
The Javascript IDE space isn't great; standard integration with source control and intelligent code sensing makes Eclipse Luna a strong contender.
Visual Studio
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio
Visual Studio is better than NetBeans or Eclipse when writing software that will only run on a Windows OS. I would not recommend Visual Studio for writing software running on other OSs.
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio
I selected Visual Studio IDE because of its fast syntax analysis capabilities, the ease of which I can install, update and remove packages from my application. The IDE comes with an integrated SVC plugin which allows the fast synchronization of my code. NetBeans falls down in …
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio
PyCharm is a one programming language tool. If you program in multiple languages Visual Studio if much better. Until a few weeks ago, if you were developing in Java, Eclipse was the IDE to use, but now that Visual Studio supports Java, I would look to see if Visual Studio might …
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio
I've used evaluated IBM Rational Developer for i, IBM Rational Application Developer, Android Studio, Eclipse for Java, and a few others. Visual Studio is the best. Other tools require longer setup times, don't always have all the tools integrated into the IDE or require …
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio
I used Eclipse and NetBeans when working as a Java developer. Both IDEs are inferior developer experiences with slower performance and downright chaotic user-interfaces. If the nature of the project would allow adoption of Visual Studio over these alternatives, I would highly …
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio
We are currently using Eclipse at my current workplace and I find that Visual Studio was a better choice as it could be integrated with other tools to accomplish a task and the user interface was really good. Visual Studio was somehow quick in performing different tasks like …
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio
The only other IDE I've been using in the past is Eclipse. In my opinion VS IDE is more solid software, especially after years of development; but also it's more complicated. Eclipse, as I remember, used to be easier to learn and simpler, but less powerful.
In a few words:
  • Visua…
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio
Compared to a lot of these options (which are free except WebStorm), Visual Studio definitely leads the pack as far as its completeness of feature set. There are deep integrations with the Microsoft ecosystem with Visual Studio that the others can't really compete with, as …
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio
Eclipse, PyCharm, NetBeans I have used during my internship for smaller applications but to have a full end-to-end application with ease to connect to database and deployment I believe Visual Studio is way better than other available IDE in this space.
Although your options get …
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio
I have used Eclipse and PyCharm for smaller projects. However, VS IDE is more for a bigger company/organization. It is an enterprise software that is perfect for a company who can pay the money to use and maintain it. Eclipse and PyCharm are more for non-business use as they …
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio
We choose Visual Studio IDE because it is easier to set up with C# and more stable. Each time we use Eclipse to make a program, we had bad behavior. Maybe that was our computer setup but we finally go with something more stable and more useful for our company.
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio
Some of the editors are suitable for a particular programming language . For example PyCharm is suited for Python .
Visual Studio has support for many languages and Visual Studio is comparatively light weight from most of the IDE . The ability to get extensions and use them is …
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio
The only downside in VS compared to these is that it doesn't hava Java support. If it had i doubt i would have to use any other IDE than VS. Overall it has the largest amount of features and support/integration for different environments, and also has the most friendly UI.
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio
It's a well [maintained], mature IDE, which has the benefit of being a [software] which only the most skilled developers works on, instead of being open source. It has a lot of very useful features, which most free IDE-s don't. Also, it has many options from commercial …
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio
The main reason why we can't choose the Visual Studio IDE is that the entity framework provides excellent solutions. Besides, there is a very strong community of users. The Visual Studio IDE has a very user-friendly display. Creating functions and creating classes is much more …
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio
Visual Studio was my preferred IDE before Rider became mature enough to replace it. Rider's performance, source control tools, and built-in refactoring make VS limited to specific use cases where Rider doesn't support.

Chose Microsoft Visual Studio
Visual Studio is simpler and very easy to use. It has more features integrated and also contains more platforms to develop (Android, Windows, Web, Data Science, C#, .NET, etc). It has two versions: one is the community version, that is free, and a professional version for …
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio
It was better integrated with technologies we used, worked more reliably, had better IntelliSense.
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio
It provides many inbuilt GUI feature that is used to create window applications easily. This tool provides more simplicity and flexibility to build applications as compared to other IDE tools.
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio
There are other free open-source project alternatives that you could use instead of Visual Studio. If you are using non-Microsoft services such as AWS, you should consider using other programming languages that don't cost as much due to licensing.
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio
Visual Studio is by far the most full featured IDE. I don't think it makes sense for many types of applications but for c# .net applications it is a must. For web development I would use a lightweight application such as Atom, Sublime, or Visual Studio Code.
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio
For .NET development in particular - Visual Studio is the premier editor. We also use it for larger projects in other technology stacks because of the discovery tooling it has built in. For small edits - or small projects, we tend to favor lighter weight tooling.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
EclipseMicrosoft Visual Studio
Small Businesses
Visual Studio
Visual Studio
Score 9.0 out of 10
PyCharm
PyCharm
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Visual Studio
Visual Studio
Score 9.0 out of 10
PyCharm
PyCharm
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Visual Studio
Visual Studio
Score 9.0 out of 10
PyCharm
PyCharm
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
EclipseMicrosoft Visual Studio
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(73 ratings)
9.3
(104 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(3 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(2 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
6.8
(19 ratings)
8.8
(15 ratings)
User Testimonials
EclipseMicrosoft Visual Studio
Likelihood to Recommend
Open Source
I think that if someone asked me for an IDE for Java programming, I would definitely recommend Eclipse as is one of the most complete solutions for this language out there. If the main programming language of that person is not Java, I don't think Eclipse would suit his needs[.]
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Microsoft
It's useful for app development, debugging, and testing. I've been using it for two years and have seen it grow into a fantastic tool. All of the features, NuGet packages, and settings that enable different types of projects are fantastic. It also has a connection to Azure DevOps and Git. It's a fantastic product that's simple to use.
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Pros
Open Source
  • Eclipse organizes imports well and does a good job presenting different programming languages.
  • Eclipse auto formats source code allowing customization and increased readability.
  • Eclipse reports errors automatically to users rather than logging it to the console.
  • Eclipse has coding shortcuts and auto-correction features allowing faster software development.
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Microsoft
  • Since Microsoft offers a free Community Edition of the IDE many of our new developers have used it at home or school and are very familiar with the user interface, requiring little training to move up to the paid, enterprise-friendly editions we use.
  • The online community support for Visual Studio is outstanding, as solid or better than any other commercial or open-source project software.
  • Microsoft continuously keeps the product up to date and has maintained a history of doing so. They use it internally for their own development so there is little chance it will ever fall out of favor and become unsupported.
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Cons
Open Source
  • While the DB integration is broad (many connectors) it isn't particularly deep. So if you need to do serious DB work on (for example) SQL Server, it is sometimes necessary to go directly to the SQL Server Studio. But for general access and manipulation, it is ok.
  • The syntax formatting is sometimes painful to set up and doesn't always support things well. For example, it doesn't effectively support SCSS.
  • Using it for remote debugging in a VM works pretty well, but it is difficult to set up and there is no documentation I could find to really explain how to do it. When remote debugging, the editor does not necessarily integrate the remote context. So, for example, things like Pylint don't always find the libraries in the VM and display spurious errors.
  • The debugging console is not the default, and my choice is never remembered, so every time I restart my program, it's a dialog and several clicks to get it back. The debugging console has the same contextual problems with remote debugging that the editor does.
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Microsoft
  • Certain settings and features can sometimes be challenging to locate. The interface isn't always intuitive.
  • Sometimes there are too many ways to do the same thing. For example, users can quickly add a new workspace in Source Control Explorer when a local path shows as "Not Mapped," but it doesn't indicate that the user might want to check the dropdown list of workspaces. The shortcut of creating a new workspace by clicking on the "Not Mapped" link can lead to developers creating too many workspaces and causing workspace management to become unwieldy. If the shortcut link were removed, the user would be forced to use the Workspace dropdown. While it can add an extra step to the process, workspaces would be managed more easily, and this would enforce consistency. At the very least, there should be a high-level administrative setting to hide the shortcut link.
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Likelihood to Renew
Open Source
I love this product, what makes it one of the best tool out in the market is its ability to function with a wide range of languages. The online community support is superb, so you are never stuck on an issue. The customization is endless, you can keep adding plugins or jars for more functionalities as per your requirements. It's Free !!!
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Microsoft
VS is the best and is required for building Microsoft applications. The quality and usefulness of the product far out-weight the licensing costs associated with it.
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Usability
Open Source
It has everything that the developer needs to do the job. Few things that I have used in my day-to-day development 1. Console output. 2. Software flash functionality supporting multiple JTAG vendors like J-LINK. 3. Debugging capabilities like having a breakpoint, looking at the assembly, looking at the memory etc. this also applies to Embedded boards. 4. Plug-in like CMake, Doxygen and PlantUML are available.
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Microsoft
The thing I like the most is Visual Studio doesn't suffer from Microsoft's over eager marketing department who feel they need to redesign the UI (think Office and windows) which forces users to loose large amounts of productivity having to learn software that they had previously known.
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Support Rating
Open Source
I gave this rating because Eclipse is an open-source free IDE therefore no support system is available as far as I know. I have to go through other sources to solve my problem which is very tough and annoying. So if you are using Eclipse then you are on your own, as a student, it is not a big issue for me but for developers it is a need.
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Microsoft
Between online forums like StackOverflow, online documentation, MSDN forums, and the customer support options, I find it very easy to get support for Visual Studio IDE when I need it. If desired, one can also download the MSDN documentation about the IDE and have it readily available for any support needs.
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Alternatives Considered
Open Source
The installation, adaptability, and ease of usage for Eclipse are pretty high and simple compared to some of the other products. Also, the fact that it is almost a plug and play once the connections are established and once a new user gets the hang of the system comes pretty handy.
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Microsoft
I personally feel Visual Studio IDE has [a] better interface and [is more] user friendly than other IDEs. It has better code maintainability and intellisense. Its inbuilt team foundation server help coders to check on their code then and go. Better nugget package management, quality testing and gives features to extract TRX file as result of testing which includes all the summary of each test case.
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Return on Investment
Open Source
  • This development environment offers the possibility of improving the productivity time of work teams by supporting the integration of large architectures.
  • It drives constant change and evolution in work teams thanks to its constant versioning.
  • It works well enough to develop continuous server client integrations, based on solid or any other programming principle.
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Microsoft
  • We've had hundreds of hours saved by the rapid development that Visual Studio provides.
  • We've lost some time in the Xamarin updates. However, being cross platform, we ultimately saved tons of time not having to create separate apps for iOS and Android.
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