IntelliJ IDEA vs. Microsoft Visual Studio Code

IntelliJ IDEA

Microsoft Visual Studio Code

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting 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.	$19.90 per month
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

IntelliJ IDEA

Microsoft Visual Studio Code

Editions & Modules

For Individual Use (Monthly billing): $19.90
per month
For Organizations (Monthly billing): $71.90
per month
For Individual Use (Yearly billing): $199
per year
For Organizations (Yearly billing): $719
per year

No answers on this topic

Offerings

Pricing Offerings
IntelliJ IDEA	Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Free Trial
Yes	No
Free/Freemium Version
Yes	Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No	No

Entry-level Setup Fee

No setup fee

Additional Details

All Products Pack (For Individual Use) – $299 /1st year, $ 239 /2nd year and $ 179 /3d year onwards All Products Pack (For Organizations) – $979 / year

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More Pricing Information

Community Pulse
	IntelliJ IDEA	Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Considered Both Products	IntelliJ IDEA David Tanner Sr Software Engineer Chose IntelliJ IDEA 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 … Incentivized Helpful? Dushyant Pathak (DKP) Technology Analyst Chose IntelliJ IDEA IntelliJ IDEA has several benefits over vs code when it comes to Java applications, including in-built Java compilers, Maven lifecycle support, Lombok preprocessing, and sonar integration. While vs code is largely generic, IntelliJ IDEA has focused primarily on Java … Incentivized Helpful? Animesh Kumar Senior Member of Technical Staff Chose IntelliJ IDEA IntelliJ stacks better against Eclipse or vs code because it provides better code suggestions, out-of-the-box SonarLint integration, and built-in support for version control with git. It also has a vast collection of plugins that can increase developer productivity, reduce … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Team Lead Chose IntelliJ IDEA Back in the day, there weren't too many PHP IDEs with proper syntax and code checks, but PHPStorm and IDEA worked great. So great that when I needed a Java IDE the next time, I gave it a go and have never looked back since (okay, I did keep checking the competition and … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Engineer Chose IntelliJ IDEA IntelliJ IDEA is the most specific and oriented towards my line of work, however, after using it for years - it's also my preferred IDE that I use for personal projects as well. Jetbrains other IDE offerings are almost as good and I do use them from time to time but IntelliJ … Incentivized Helpful? LS Lakshita Salian Manager Chose IntelliJ IDEA Intellij is faster and smoother. SO it saves development time Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Engineer Chose IntelliJ IDEA IntelliJ IDEA is one of the products of JetBrains and it beats every IDE in the market in terms of performance, user experience, and productivity. Incentivized Helpful? Balázs Kiss Software Developer 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 … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Administrator Chose IntelliJ IDEA IntelliJ IDEA includes FTP deployment which is ideal for legacy web applications and simple projects that don't use CI/CD. The outline view which lists methods within a class (ColdFusion component) is the easiest to use out of any other IDE and makes navigating large files a … Incentivized Helpful? KV Kunal Verma Software Engineer Intern Chose IntelliJ IDEA They are memory friendly. The boot-up really fast as compared to IntelliJ IDE. Open-source and freely available to use is one of the major reasons if someone can switch from IntelliJ. Vast community support is available in case of any issue. They occupy less space as compared … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Engineer Chose IntelliJ IDEA Since we are primarily a Scala shop, I only evaluated other tools based on their support for Scala. As I hinted at before, Vim and Sublime Text 3 have practically no support for Scala as all the Scala plugins that worked were never finished and abandoned and only work for Scala … Incentivized Helpful? Zhann Goloborodko Senior Programmer/Analyst Chose IntelliJ IDEA Eclipse is an amazing all-purpose IDE. However, when it comes to developing Java applications, IntelliJ is far better suited. Incentivized Helpful? Rahul Rajput Data Engineer Chose IntelliJ IDEA Chosen for its feature of auto-downloading dependencies and intelligent suggestions. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Employee Chose IntelliJ IDEA IntelliJ IDEA is the best we have found so far for development and querying CRM and databases. We buy licenses for several users to speed up our development and configuration processes. It really accelerates our development and productivity. It is stable and fast and easier to … Incentivized Helpful? Dhruba Jyoti Nag Associate Chose IntelliJ IDEA The main competitors of IntelliJ IDEA in the Java world must be Eclipse and Spring Tools Suite. It performs better than both in code refactoring, code completion and debugging (the features of an IDE) but the plugin support is much better in the other 2 products, since they are … Incentivized Helpful?	Microsoft Visual Studio Code Verified User Director Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code There are many IDEs available but I don't think anyone is better than Visual Studio Code. Most others are language dependent softwares while VS Code supports all the languages. There are others popular available like Atom, Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA, and WebStorm but none of them … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Engineer Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code Microsoft Visual Studio Code is a great competitor to all the IDEs listed above. The vast range of extensions is a strength of the Microsoft Visual Studio Code ecosystem. Integration of Copilot is another add-on, which makes development and debugging very easy and … Incentivized Helpful? JA Josh Armitage Modern Engineering Practice Lead Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code The licensing of the IntelliJ IDEs is prohibitive, I cannot be sure that I can continue to leverage them as I move between clients. Helpful? Fedor Tyurin CTO (Chief Technical Officer) Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code Microsoft Visual Studio Code is free Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Manager Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code As mentioned before, IDE's can be excellent with one thing, and the company we do a lot of things, so it's kind of annoying to have multiple programs, heavy ones to open your work, so just use one, Microsoft Visual Studio Code, personalize thanks to extensions, and you are … Incentivized Helpful? Greg Garnhart Research & Development: Product Intern Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code VS Code is much more lightweight than IntelliJ and Eclipse and is certainly comparable to Atom. I find that for most of my projects, VS Code is the most stable option, and is generally the quickest to boot. Generally, trying out all four can't hurt, but VS Code has been the … Incentivized Helpful? Apurv Doshi Senior Solutions Architect Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code I think VS Code is much better as compared to all the tools mentioned above. Just waiting for its support for iOS and Android development. currently, it misses support for them. That's where you will require Xcode and Android Studio. Incentivized Helpful? Jude Allred Co-Founder & CTA Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code When you start using [Microsoft Visual Studio Code], it lands more on the "text editor" side of the spectrum, akin to Vim/Emacs/Sublime. Aligned with this, it's fast and easy to install and setup, and competes with the best of them as a great general purpose tool. But then it … Incentivized Helpful? Balázs Kiss Software Developer Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code Visual Studio Code is one of the peak engineering tools you can use today on the market. It's one of the most advanced IDE, and, currently, a de-facto top-used IDE. This alone should be proof to use it. Incentivized Helpful? Tharsanan Kurukulasingam Software Engineer Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code When it comes to UI and light weightiness, Visual Code is the winner. But when it comes to Intelli-Sense and autosuggestion IntelliJ works better in my view. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Engineer Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code Compared against a lot of other popular IDEs, I would say that VSCode is the perfect balance between complexity, language support, etc, for web languages. It's faster than most (though not quite as fast as native ones like Notepad++ or Sublime Text), and very flexible. Even in … Incentivized Helpful? SM Saad Moumen Software Engineer Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code The main plus for me was the speed, sleek UI, and the memorable shortcuts for VS Code. Also the smart auto-complete as well as version management (Git), Chrome debugging, and the possibility of plugging in multiple language-specific linters for a better code. The auto-complete … Incentivized Helpful?

TrustRadius Insights
	IntelliJ IDEA	Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Highlights	Research Team Insight Published February 5, 2024 IntelliJ IDEA’s customers frequently mention its broad range of use cases, from developing desktop and mobile applications to working on complex enterprise-level projects. Its users appreciate the vast array of built-in tools for coding, debugging, and testing, and report regularly using the tool’s extensive integration capabilities with frameworks and languages like Java, Python, and Scala. The product’s capacity to handle large codebases is consistently highlighted, making IntelliJ a popular choice amongst those working on substantial, intricate projects. In contrast, Visual Studio Code’s users regularly cite its effectiveness for smaller-scale projects, particularly when using languages like JavaScript and TypeScript. Users often remark on its speed and efficiency, with a lighter resource footprint than IntelliJ, making it appropriate for use in low-resource environments or with less demanding projects. The extensibility via plugins for virtually every language and framework is frequently mentioned, demonstrating a broad range of use cases for this product. Although the tool’s users find it lacks some of IntelliJ’s integrated functionality, the flexibility to customize VS Code to individual needs via extensions is highly valued.

Best Alternatives
	IntelliJ IDEA	Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Small Businesses	PyCharm Score 9.2 out of 10	BBEdit Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies	PyCharm Score 9.2 out of 10	Vim Score 9.4 out of 10
Enterprises	PyCharm Score 9.2 out of 10	Vim Score 9.4 out of 10
All Alternatives	View all alternatives	View all alternatives

User Ratings
	IntelliJ IDEA	Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Likelihood to Recommend	9.7 (58 ratings)	8.7 (91 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew	5.0 (1 ratings)	9.4 (2 ratings)
Usability	9.2 (8 ratings)	9.1 (8 ratings)
Support Rating	8.9 (15 ratings)	9.7 (23 ratings)
Implementation Rating	9.0 (1 ratings)	- (0 ratings)

User Testimonials
	IntelliJ IDEA	Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Likelihood to Recommend	JetBrains This is a superb tool if your project involves a lot of backend development, especially in Java/Spring Boot and Kotlin. The support for the front end is great as well, but some developers may prefer to use the GitHub copilot add-on. I especially love using the GitHub copilot add-on. It may be less appropriate if your project requires heavy use of HotSwaps for backend debugging, as sometimes the support for that can be limited. Incentivized Gaurav Gosavi Staff Software Engineer Read full review	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. JA Josh Armitage Modern Engineering Practice Lead Read full review
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. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	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. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Cons	JetBrains Finding if a feature exists or not in IntelliJ IDEA can be challenging. For example, if we know how to format a particular file, the command is Ctrl+Alt+Shift+L, but if we don't, then finding it is difficult. Setting up a project interpreter and directory structure might not be intuitive at first. Git integration can be improved. For example, it isn't easy to rebase using UI in IntelliJ IDEA. Incentivized Animesh Kumar Senior Member of Technical Staff Read full review	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 Incentivized Moris Mendez Ing. de Sistemas Informaticos Read full review
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. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	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. Incentivized Steven Gockley, MBA, MCSA DBA / Sr. Data Analyst Read full review
Usability	JetBrains There is always room for improvement, but I haven't met any IDE that I liked more so far. Even if it did not fit a use case right out of the box, there is always a way to configure how it works to do just that. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	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. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
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. Incentivized Bruce Carter Senior Systems Engineer Read full review
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). Incentivized Bruce Carter Senior Systems Engineer Read full review
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. Incentivized KV Kunal Verma Software Engineer Intern Read full review	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. Incentivized Patrick Fong Senior Software Engineer Read full review
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. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	Microsoft No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered	JetBrains Eclipse is just so old, like a dinosaur, compared to IntelliJ. There are still formats that Eclipse supports better, especially old and/or propriety ones. Still, most of the modern software development needs can be done on IntelliJ, & in a much better way, some of them are not even supported on Eclipse. Incentivized Tung Vu Senior Software Engineer Read full review	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. Incentivized Mark Orlando Senior Developer Analyst Read full review
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. Incentivized Bruce Carter Senior Systems Engineer Read full review
Return on Investment	JetBrains Easier to find bugs and debugs, thus reducing man hours and generating immediate dollar impact. Coding time is lessened, which in turn again reduces man hours and generates immediate dollar impact. Refactoring code is more innovative and easy here, resulting in more maintainable code. Incentivized Dhruba Jyoti Nag Associate Read full review	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 Incentivized Jude Allred Co-Founder & CTA Read full review
ScreenShots	IntelliJ IDEA Screenshots