Microsoft Visual Studio Code vs. PhpStorm

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
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
PhpStorm
Score 9.5 out of 10
N/A
JetBrains supports PhpStorm, an integrated development environment (IDE).
$9.90
per month per user
Pricing
Microsoft Visual Studio CodePhpStorm
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
For Individuals
$99
per year per user
For Organizations
$249
per year per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Microsoft Visual Studio CodePhpStorm
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Microsoft Visual Studio CodePhpStorm
Considered Both Products
Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
For our software dev teams, they still use the products from JetBrains (PhpStorm, RubyMine, etc) when they are laser-focused on one technology. For our less experienced, less code specific web dev team, Microsoft Visual Studio Code knocks it out of the park. I'd recommend …
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Microsoft Visual Studio Code stacks up favorably against PhpStorm for developing PHP- and JS-based web projects. In our company, developers generally choose from one of these two applications, based primarily on personal taste. Both are great for development and debugging our …
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
[Microsoft] Visual Studio Code beats the competition due to its extensibility. Their robust extensions architecture combined with the plethora of mostly free extensions written by the community can't be beaten. The fact that this tool itself is provided by a world-recognized …
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Microsoft VS Code is extremely customizable with needs. So, features like syntax highlighting, bracket-matching, auto-indentation, well-integrated terminal, and side-by-side editing are powerful. Even these features are given free with Microsoft VS code. PyCharm and WebStorm
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
  • It's light weight, merely 50 MB in Linux still very powerful in terms of file searching, code formatting.
  • VS Code Git integration is superb, I am in love with this feature, line by line code difference and Git UI interface makes version management amazingly fast.
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code offers a great IDE for the price, bottom-line. But due to the price and the fact it is for multiple programming languages, you will give up a few features. It can catch some basic syntax issues, but will be more limited than a tool dedicated to the particular …
PhpStorm
Chose PhpStorm
A few of my team members started on vs code but after switching to PhpStorm they never looked back. Many of vs code features require adding in add on after addon to get at or near the included feature set of PHP storm that includes it out of the box. Plus PhpStorm allows so …
Chose PhpStorm
While these two are also code editors, they are far from as robust as the PhpStorm IDE. Although these editors also support plugins to perform functions similar to PhpStorm, by bringing it natively it is much more efficient and you get rid of compatibility worries, etc. and it …
Chose PhpStorm
PhpStorm is without compare for a shop that works entirely in PHP. We've evaluated some of the other text editors on the market and while they have their perks, specifically speed, they aren't nearly as easy to navigate within the codebase or make sweeping changes.
Chose PhpStorm
Easier to use, more features, more reliable. Much more purpose built with specific integrations aimed directly at php code instead of the broad generic interfaces the other software have that are aiming to support many different languages.
Chose PhpStorm
Both Visual Studio Code an Sublime Text are excellent code editors, and even offer a better performance than PHPStorm. However they are not complete IDE's and do not perform half of the tasks that PHPStorm does.
Best Alternatives
Microsoft Visual Studio CodePhpStorm
Small Businesses
BBEdit
BBEdit
Score 10.0 out of 10
PyCharm
PyCharm
Score 9.2 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Vim
Vim
Score 9.6 out of 10
PyCharm
PyCharm
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
Vim
Vim
Score 9.6 out of 10
PyCharm
PyCharm
Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Microsoft Visual Studio CodePhpStorm
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(91 ratings)
9.9
(19 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.4
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.1
(8 ratings)
9.2
(5 ratings)
Support Rating
9.7
(23 ratings)
9.4
(3 ratings)
User Testimonials
Microsoft Visual Studio CodePhpStorm
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
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JetBrains
PhpStorm is well suited for any project that utilizes PHP. I have used it on Windows, Ubuntu, and Mac OS and it works great on all those platforms. Having a solution that keeps the developer from having to constantly switch tools to do their job is invaluable. Whether you're a junior developer, front end engineer or a senior developer, PhpStorm is a great product that will help you get your work done.
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Pros
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.
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JetBrains
  • Database browsing, Remote host browsing, and all the deep seated customizations for both the UI and Technical feasability are the result of an amazing integrity and compatibility with most components and technologies.
  • The built-in shell is insanely helpful for traversing code in order to debug scripts with ease, and the plug-in system makes this software quite extensible.
  • Not to mention the variety of options and settings (divided into global settings and per-project settings) are both intuitive & easy to use, especially the fact that I can export and import them across my workstations while maintaining my spacing & indentation, highlighting, inspection patterns and syntax styling.
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Cons
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
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JetBrains
  • Some of the newest github copilot features lag behind what's being done in vs code and would be nice if more of the newer features were brought over though this has greatly improved recently
  • Interface can be a little overwhelming for newcomers
  • Some features like rainbow brackets should be native rather than addon
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Likelihood to Renew
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.
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JetBrains
No answers on this topic
Usability
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.
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JetBrains
PhpStorm is very easy to use, once you get the hang of it. It can take a while to get the hang of it because there's so many options, some of which are buried in the imposing settings panel. It could use some help with multi-cursor, especially multi-file editing but that's a minor gripe.
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Reliability and Availability
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.
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JetBrains
No answers on this topic
Performance
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).
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JetBrains
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
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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JetBrains
The JetBrains community is all about helping others succeed, even in the most obscure setups. I have never had a question go unanswered, or I have never been able to come up with empty results in searching for the answer. My questions or concerns are typically address from other users in the community, so timing is pretty quick for a response
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Alternatives Considered
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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JetBrains
Easier to use, more features, more reliable. Much more purpose built with specific integrations aimed directly at php code instead of the broad generic interfaces the other software have that are aiming to support many different languages.
Read full review
Scalability
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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JetBrains
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
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
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JetBrains
  • PhpStorm decreased the time to market of new features - we are following the Agile SCRUM methodology with 2 weeks sprints. Using PhpStorm helped with releasing UI features even faster than 2 weeks.
  • Considering the price of the license and the cost of the server where we run it, the ROI is still high due to less time spent by developers with writing code, debugging, refactoring etc. Especially when you have highly paid developers.
  • Increased people's happiness - by using a modern tool with lots of features which has made their work easier.
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