GNU Emacs vs. IntelliJ IDEA

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
GNU Emacs
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
GNU Emacs is described as a free extensible and customizable text editor for the Lisp programming language.N/A
IntelliJ IDEA
Score 9.3 out of 10
N/A
IntelliJ IDEA is an IDE that aims to give Java and Kotlin developers everything they need out of the box, including a smart code editor, built-in developer tools, framework support, database support, web development support, and much more.
$16.90
per month
Pricing
GNU EmacsIntelliJ IDEA
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
For Individual Use
$16.90
per month
All Products Pack (For Individual Use)
$28.90
per month
For Organizations
$59.90
per month
All Products Pack (For Organizations)
$77.90
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
GNU EmacsIntelliJ IDEA
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsYearly subscriptions: For Individual Use – $169 /1st year, $ 135 /2nd year and $ 101 /3d year onwards For Organizations – $599 /1st year, $479 /2nd year and $ 359 /3rd year onwards All Products Pack (For Individual Use) – $289 /1st year, $ 231 /2nd year and $ 173 /3d year onwards All Products Pack (For Organizations) – $799 /1st year, $623 /2nd year and $ 467 /3rd year onwards
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
GNU EmacsIntelliJ IDEA
Considered Both Products
GNU Emacs
Chose GNU Emacs
I have used several different IDEs and editors, but I keep coming back to Emacs. I guess my fingers are wired for Emacs and I find that I can do pretty much anything in the tool that I can with other tools. Some other tools are more polished, but are specific to certain …
IntelliJ IDEA

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
GNU EmacsIntelliJ IDEA
Small Businesses
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Score 9.3 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
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Score 9.7 out of 10
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Score 9.3 out of 10
Enterprises
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Score 9.7 out of 10
PyCharm
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Score 9.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
GNU EmacsIntelliJ IDEA
Likelihood to Recommend
8.2
(4 ratings)
8.5
(55 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
5.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(4 ratings)
Support Rating
8.2
(2 ratings)
8.9
(15 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
GNU EmacsIntelliJ IDEA
Likelihood to Recommend
Open Source
Emacs is best utilized on a Unix system where it can be easily installed and accessed. It allows for quick editing of files on a system whether you are accessing it locally through the console or remotely via an ssh connection. Once users familiarize themselves with the Emacs shortcuts, it becomes a pretty efficient text manipulation program. On a standard Windows computer, it is less likely to use Emacs for code editing, especially if you have a local repository on your host machine.
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JetBrains
For a modern software project, where you want to store everything as code, from the backend to the frontend, to the DB patch scripts, to the documents, API specs, diagrams, infrastructure-as-code, etc. IntelliJ is basically your one-stop. In the same IDE, you can write code, write a spec, draw diagrams, make changes to patch scripts, infrastructure definition.
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Pros
Open Source
  • GNU Emacs is a text editor that can do almost anything that you want to do with it. It is fairly easy to extend the functionality using Emacs Lisp with a large library available.
  • It can be easily customized using themes as well as custom code to change the look and feel as well as how everything works.
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JetBrains
  • Unit testing: Fully integrated into IntelliJ IDEA. Your unit tests will run smoothly and efficiently, with excellent debugging tools for when things get tricky.
  • Spring integration: Our Spring project using Maven works flawlessly in IntelliJ IDEA. I know firsthand that Apache is also easily and readily supported too. The integration is seamless and very easy to set up using IntelliJ IDEA's set up wizard when importing new projects.
  • Customization: IntelliJ IDEA comes out of the box with a bunch of handy shortcuts, as well as text prediction, syntax error detection, and other tools to help keep your code clean. But even better is that it allows for total customization of shortcuts you can easily create to suit your needs.
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Cons
Open Source
  • Emacs is old, so it's a little crufty and not too easy to pick up and start using. There is a community package called Spacemacs that simplifies a lot of things that you do with Emacs. It is probably better suited to beginners.
  • Sometimes, the choices that were made to integrate certain functionality change the basic models for that functionality. This is seen primarily in the version control system support, where multiple version control systems are supported and "unified" to a standard Emacs-y way of doing things. This can be confusing to the new user not familiar with the Emacs way.
  • Emacs has, as its foundation, a lisp interpreter. This means that the extension language for Emacs is emacs-lisp. Some people find lisp hard to understand and have difficulties writing Emacs extension code, or understanding existing code.
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JetBrains
  • IntelliJ IDEA wins as long as the language is Java. Outside that , e.g., in other languages, it is not so advanced.
  • It is licensed, with a steep licensing cost. All features are not included in the free edition.
  • It is not as light as Eclipse, so in a weak system, it can be a pain.
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Likelihood to Renew
Open Source
No answers on this topic
JetBrains
VS Code is maturing and has a Scala plugin now. The overall experience with VS Code - for web development at least - is very snappy/fast. IntelliJ feels a bit sluggish in comparison. If that Scala plugin for VS Code is deemed mature enough - we may not bother renewing and resort to the Community Edition if we need it.
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Usability
Open Source
No answers on this topic
JetBrains
The user interface for IntelliJ Idea is phenomenal. It's got the usual JetBrains interface but it works well to support all Java processes. All in all, it is a solid product and to be expected from JetBrains who creates this integrated development environment software. It allows me to test in the IDE and run other manual workflows automatically such as install packages.
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Support Rating
Open Source
Everything that you need to know about Emacs can be found on the internet. There are many Emacs "cheat sheets" that list out all of the shortcuts for Emacs. There are videos on how to use Emacs. Emacs is easily installed using the standard Linux package managers and can also be easily updated through them as well. There are tutorials on how to customize Emacs to your liking.
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JetBrains
Customer support is really good in the case of IntelliJ. If you are paying for this product then, the company makes sure that you will get all the services adequately. Regular update patches are provided to improve the IDE. An online bug report makes it easier for the developers to find the solution as fast as possible. The large online community also helps to find the various solutions to the issues.
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Implementation Rating
Open Source
No answers on this topic
JetBrains
This installs just like any other application - its pretty straight forward. Perhaps licensing could be more challenging - but if you use the cloud licensing they offer its as simple as having engineers login to the application and it just works.
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Alternatives Considered
Open Source
Of course, Vim is a good contender for comparison as well, so I'll include it. I find Emacs much easier to learn, which will help speed up productivity for newer users. It seems much faster than VIM and VSCode, especially under load. It's highly highly customizable, in ways other editors don't stack up against. Its lack of bloat also is a nice addition to a great product.
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JetBrains
Microsoft Visual Studio Code (VS) requires a lot of textual configuration, where IntelliJ IDEA provides a graphical interface with configuration options displayed. This matters a lot to me as I don't want to hunt around the internet to remember how to set different parameters that I don't use very often. This may be the biggest reason I don't use VS. Eclipse was great for when I was in college, but the power offered by IDEA is so much better that I haven't actually looked back since.
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Return on Investment
Open Source
  • Emacs is free software, there is no cost at all.
  • It has helped tremendously in situations where many, or large, log files need to be searched.
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JetBrains
  • IntelliJ wasn't provided as complimentary, but the pricing was reasonable. We're healthcare organization of which our applications used to be mission critical and affect to patient safety, we were willing to pay the price.
  • With the pricing, business support was good and well conducted during the project.
  • Overall it was cost-effective as it saved our developers' time in general. (We don't have quantitative measure but we got feedback from them)
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ScreenShots

IntelliJ IDEA Screenshots

Screenshot of IntelliJ IDEA interface overview: the Project tool window (left) outlines the code structure and the Editor (right) is used to read, write, and explore the source code.Screenshot of IntelliJ IDEA analyzing the context. It then suggests the most applicable and relevant code.Screenshot of the Search Everywhere window, where users can search for files, actions, classes, symbols, settings, UI elements, and anything in Git, all from a single entry point.Screenshot of inspections to help find probable bugs and dead code, detect performance issues, and improve the overall code structure by providing quick-fixes for any code that contains potential concerns.Screenshot of IntelliJ IDEA's support for frameworks with dedicated assistance for Jakarta EE, JPA, Reactor, Spring and Spring Boot, and other popular frameworks.Screenshot of the AI Assistant that provides AI-powered features for software development. It can explain code, answer questions about code fragments, provide code suggestions, generate documentation, and commit messages.