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.
$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
NetBeans
Score 7.1 out of 10
N/A
NetBeans is a free and open source platform and integrated development environment (IDE).N/A
Pricing
IntelliJ IDEAMicrosoft Visual Studio CodeNetBeans
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
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IntelliJ IDEAMicrosoft Visual Studio CodeNetBeans
Free Trial
YesNoNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesYesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsAll Products Pack (For Individual Use) – $299 /1st year, $ 239 /2nd year and $ 179 /3d year onwards All Products Pack (For Organizations) – $979 / year
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
IntelliJ IDEAMicrosoft Visual Studio CodeNetBeans
Considered Multiple Products
IntelliJ IDEA
Chose IntelliJ IDEA
The number of features provided by the IntelliJ and looking at those amazing features it's very clear that everyone will choose IntelliJ over Eclipse and NetBeans. But if you don't have a good machine with a high RAM size then it will be difficult to use this tool on your …
Chose IntelliJ IDEA
Before IntelliJ IDEA developers were using NetBeans or Eclipse for the development. There are many reasons to change from that application to IntelliJ. Firstly, both Eclipse and NetBeans are free and they are not providing support as IntelliJ supports for its users. Eclipse and …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Chose IntelliJ IDEA
Previously we were using Eclipse but due to the ease of understanding and easy to navigate user interface with drop downs, wizards they are better in IntelliJ moreover for experienced developers migrating to IntelliJ as compared to Eclipse. It has an easy to understand UI and …
Chose IntelliJ IDEA
Compared to the other alternatives, IntelliJ is more complete, modern and robust. The other alternatives are dated and do not have features that exist by default in IntelliJ.
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.

Chose IntelliJ IDEA
UI--IntelliJ IDEA is the winner.
IntelliSense--Again, IntelliJ IDEA is the winner.
Performance and CPU usage - IntelliJ IDEA has a lot of room to improve on this. Eclipse handle the large projects more effectively than 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 …
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 …
Chose IntelliJ IDEA
Against competition I can say about IntelliJ that:
1. It is definitely faster and efficient than other IDEs. Comparing with Eclipse it emerges as a clear winner in terms or raw performance.
2. More feature Rich with great support for modern technologies. It has great support for …
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 …
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 …
Chose IntelliJ IDEA
Out of all three, IntellIj is the best. The other two are light weight but don't have the plugins or code quality that Intellij provides.
Chose IntelliJ IDEA
Chosen for its feature of auto-downloading dependencies and intelligent suggestions.
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 …
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 …
Chose IntelliJ IDEA
IDEA has great roadmap, every update brings useful features. Support is great. Excellent documentation. It's full-featured as it comes out of the box and even if you can't find something you'll get it via plugins.
Chose IntelliJ IDEA
For allowing me to modify to my own taste my graphic interface as my preferential option, in addition to having a wide field for high caliber project in any programming language.
Microsoft Visual Studio Code
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 …
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Microsoft Visual Studio Code has turned out to be far more powerful than the original promises of the Atom editor. Microsoft Visual Studio Code supports large files much better than Atom, and more extensions are available for language support. NetBeans has been a slower …
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 …
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.

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 …
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 …
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.
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 …
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.
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
In all honesty, I've not even looked back at any of these alternatives since switching to Microsoft Visual Studio Code a few years ago, there simply isn't the need. For all I know they're all absolutely fantastic, but at the time of switching (and consistently since) Microsoft …
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.
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Microsoft Visual Studio Code wins hands down when it comes to light, easy, free yet super powerful. This is the perfect balance for that. If you need to manage a complete end to end project with team collaboration I would recommend Visual Studio IDE or Eclipse if you need to …
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 …
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 …
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Microsoft Visual Studio Code is easy to install, always updated, free, and ultra-customizable with extensions. All other alternatives either don't have these features or are not as great as VS Code in terms of implementing them. I have been using Microsoft VS Code for a year …
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
There is no point of comparison, Microsoft Visual Studio is the only one of its class.
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
It is more advanced, it has more features and is a lot better than its competitors in terms of everything.
It stands the best among all the similar software of this type.
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Microsoft Visual Studio Code has the advantage of being free to use, open source, and very customizable and lightweight. Some of the other text editors/IDE's lack some of these key features that I consider to be of extreme importance, and Visual Studio Code can be tailored to …
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code is lightweight. The community is important and grows every day. It is easily configured.
It works perfectly on our Linux workstations. The other IDE mentioned do not combine all these advantages.
NetBeans
Chose NetBeans
IntelliJ IDEA is more feature-rich and has professional support available, but comes with increased licensing costs.
Eclipse is widely used, and some of our developers still prefer Eclipse over NetBeans. However, developers spend more time working around IDE bugs when using Eclip…
Chose NetBeans
I would say NetBeans only shines when it comes to smaller projects. I prefer using Eclipse and Intellij over NetBeans when it comes to developing larger projects.
Chose NetBeans
Netbeans is great as a stand-alone java ide and for compiling your java code. The platform provides easy access to better make use of your repos. Between the other ide, NetBeans is easier for us to integrate with android SDK. The only problem is the UI and for all other code …
Chose NetBeans
It is supported primarily by Oracle and is free. This is a very important plus. Also, many things come embedded. You don't have to worry about adding library or framework. Finally, one of my favorite features is you can design the interface with drag and drop. This feature is …
Chose NetBeans
All above mentioned is good for web development and Netbeans is an IDE which can do a lot more than normal text editors. File navigation is also easy in Netbeans.
Chose NetBeans
NetBeans holds its own in comparison to other IDEs. Versus IntelliJ and Eclipse, it's a matter of preference and familiarity.
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User Ratings
IntelliJ IDEAMicrosoft Visual Studio CodeNetBeans
Likelihood to Recommend
9.7
(58 ratings)
8.7
(91 ratings)
7.8
(22 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
5.0
(1 ratings)
9.4
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.2
(8 ratings)
9.1
(8 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
8.9
(15 ratings)
9.7
(23 ratings)
8.5
(4 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
IntelliJ IDEAMicrosoft Visual Studio CodeNetBeans
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.
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.
Read full review
Open Source
NetBeans is extremely user friendly and easy to start developing complex applications. Adding and configuring external libraries is much simpler than in Eclipse. It is highly cost effective and most of the latest framework based libraries required are automatically downloaded to the projects. The overall tool is also light weight and consumes less memory as compared to other competitor tools.
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.
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.
Read full review
Open Source
  • Debugging - Save time hunting down errors by stepping through the code to find the root of a problem.
  • Refactoring - Easily rename classes and variables or make other structural changes using built-in refactoring tools.
  • Service management - NetBeans integrates seamlessly with web application servers like Tomcat and GlassFish.
  • Source control - Works well with Git and other version control tools.
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.
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
Read full review
Open Source
  • NetBeans [should] work smoothly with systems having less RAM. Systems with less RAM face trouble with NetBeans.
  • File open history also requires improvement. Once NetBeans is restarted, all files are closed automatically and there is no shortcut to open last opened files.
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.
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.
Read full review
Open Source
No answers on this topic
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.
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.
Read full review
Open Source
Netbeans enhances my coding work, shows me where I have errors and helps find variable instances. I would be lost without find/replace in projects functionality as I use projects as templates for new projects. Occasionally the code hints aggravate me, but I understand that it is actually making me a better coder, working to get the 'green light' of a clean file with no errors or clumsy code.
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.
Read full review
Open Source
No answers on this topic
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).
Read full review
Open Source
No answers on this topic
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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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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Open Source
NetBeans has a very strong user community. We can find solutions here for almost all the problems we face. In addition, we can forward NetBeans Support teams the problems we cannot solve. We can get quick feedback from the support teams, but I generally try to solve my problems by following the forums.
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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.
Read full review
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Open Source
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.
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.
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Open Source
It works very smoothly as compared to other tools . The problem of restarting and reimporting the projects is not in the netbeans IDE . The front end development features are good . Netbeans connector is one of the best thing which enables us to deeply integrate netbeans IDE with google chrome browser
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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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Open Source
No answers on this topic
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.
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
Read full review
Open Source
  • By working on Netbeans I just learned one more tool and can teach others about it. One should learn every tool so that it might help someday if another editor is not available and you have to use different software for your work.
  • Compiling code became easy as it is not a feature of normal text editors. Only IDE can do this.
Read full review
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 IntelliJ IDEA's support for frameworks with dedicated assistance for Spring and Spring Boot, Jakarta EE, JPA, Reactor, and other popular frameworks.Screenshot of the AI Assistant that provides features for software development. It can explain code, answer questions about code fragments, provide code suggestions, generate documentation, and commit messages.Screenshot of the interface to run queries, connect to databases, browse and export data, and manage schemas.