IntelliJ IDEA vs. JetBrains Rider

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
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
Rider
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
JetBrains supports .NET development with Rider, a .NET IDE based on the IntelliJ platform and ReSharper.
$14.90
per month per user
Pricing
IntelliJ IDEAJetBrains Rider
Editions & Modules
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
For Individuals
$149
per year per user
dotUltimate for Individual
$169
per year per user
All Products Pack for Individuals
$289
per year per user
For Organizations
$419
per year per user
dotUltimate for Organizations
$469
per year per user
All Products Pack for Organizations
$779
per year per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IntelliJ IDEARider
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
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 onwardsdotUltimate: All .NET tools, ReSharper C++ and JetBrains Rider, together in one pack
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
IntelliJ IDEAJetBrains Rider
Considered Both Products
IntelliJ IDEA
Chose IntelliJ IDEA
IntelliJ surpassed every single competitor. The only viable alternative I still use is VisualStudio Code build in a browser for demo purposes... other than that, IDEA does everything better, faster, and in a more comfy way. This is the best IDE out there. This is just as good …
Rider
Chose JetBrains Rider
It’s a great free tool but not as enhanced as IntelliJ platform that JetBrains Rider has. Debugging and access to database is not as comfortable to use. Sure, you can save money on IDE, but may need to spend it on sleeping and stress relief pills.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
IntelliJ IDEAJetBrains Rider
Small Businesses
PyCharm
PyCharm
Score 9.3 out of 10
Visual Studio
Visual Studio
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
PyCharm
PyCharm
Score 9.3 out of 10
Visual Studio
Visual Studio
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
PyCharm
PyCharm
Score 9.3 out of 10
Visual Studio
Visual Studio
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
IntelliJ IDEAJetBrains Rider
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(55 ratings)
9.2
(6 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
5.0
(1 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Usability
9.1
(4 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.9
(15 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
IntelliJ IDEAJetBrains Rider
Likelihood to Recommend
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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JetBrains
Initially you may think it’s not worth paying and that there are better free options, which is definitely a lie we once tried to live with. It has everything you may ever need in .NET world, code analysis and debugging works super well and all the SQL/noSQL related integrations are just next level compared to the competition. It’s worth every penny.
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Pros
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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JetBrains
  • Provides a smooth, efficient IDE for developing .NET applications. Performance has been much better than Visual Studio in my experience.
  • Integrated refactoring tools are really comprehensive and useful.
  • Integrates with other JetBrains products such as TeamCity, Upsource, dotTrace, etc.
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Cons
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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JetBrains
  • Startup time. It takes a while to index big projects.
  • Rarely it loses the intellisense and the only way to get it back is by restarting.
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Likelihood to Renew
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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JetBrains
Due to the performance and productivity benefits we get with Rider, we will continue to use it for the foreseeable future.
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Usability
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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JetBrains
Rider is a great IDE with extensive C# refactoring support and .NET-specific knowledge. This is great for building .NET applications but for our purposes, the Unity specific suggestions are really helpful.
JetBrains Rider is great as an editing and debugging environment. It reliably connects to the Unity editor and allows debugging, which some IDEs are not as reliable at doing.
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Support Rating
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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JetBrains
The support forums and knowledge base are extensive and the JetBrains support staff respond quickly to new posts and help resolve issues. There is also a publicly accessible issue tracking system, which allows you to stay on top of any bug fixes or enhancement requests.
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Implementation Rating
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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JetBrains
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
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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JetBrains
Rider is hands down smoother and way less glitchy than Visual Studio Enterprise. There are way more refactoring capabilities and spell check so that your code is readable, maintainable, and easy to follow. Since Rider is cross-platform, our developers are no longer constrained to only using Windows. We can now get a familiar development environment across Mac, Windows, or Linux!
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Return on Investment
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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JetBrains
  • All people using the same IDE makes it much easier to ramp-up and collaborate
  • Development and maintainment can be done in a more efficient way
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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.