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Overview

What is IntelliJ IDEA?

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.

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

IntelliJ IDEA has become the go-to IDE for developers working on various projects across different industries. With its support for …
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Intelligent IntelliJ

9 out of 10
May 06, 2022
I use IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate Edition for all my development needs. In addition to the great features, it allows for plugins which my …
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The power packed IDE

10 out of 10
March 30, 2022
The IntelliJ IDEA is a central tool that I use on almost a daily basis for most of my development. I am an SAP Hybris developer so have to …
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The best Java IDE

10 out of 10
September 30, 2021
Incentivized
My team is migrating from other IDEs to IntelliJ, I've had experience with other JetBrains IDEs and it's been a great change for me, we …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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For Individual Use

$16.90

On Premise
per month

All Products Pack (For Individual Use)

$28.90

On Premise
per month

For Organizations

$59.90

On Premise
per month

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.jetbrains.com/idea/buy

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Starting price (does not include set up fee)

  • $16.90 per month
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Product Demos

VSTS plugin for Android Studio and IntelliJ IDEA

YouTube

How to set up IntelliJ IDEA CE for JavaFX on Windows 7

YouTube

AWS Toolkit for IntelliJ - Setup Demo and Deploy a Lambda Function to AWS

YouTube

Announcement | Introducing the AWS Toolkit for IntelliJ IDEA

YouTube

JavaFX Tutorial | JavaFX Connect to MySQL Database (2021) - Basic Demo

YouTube
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Product Details

What is IntelliJ IDEA?

IntelliJ IDEA, a JetBrains IDE, is an integrated development environment for Java and Kotlin development. It helps users produce high-quality code more efficiently, is designed to provide everything needed out of the box, and takes care of routine tasks so users can stay focused on the bigger picture.

IntelliJ IDEA Features

  • Supported: Advanced Code Editor
  • Supported: Code Understanding
  • Supported: Collaborative and Remote

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.

IntelliJ IDEA Video

Overview of IntelliJ IDEA

IntelliJ IDEA Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise
Operating SystemsWindows, Linux, Mac
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

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.

IntelliJ IDEA starts at $16.9.

Eclipse, NetBeans, and Android Studio are common alternatives for IntelliJ IDEA.

Reviewers rate Usability highest, with a score of 9.1.

The most common users of IntelliJ IDEA are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(341)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

IntelliJ IDEA has become the go-to IDE for developers working on various projects across different industries. With its support for front-end technologies, major frameworks, and advanced code completion, users have been able to develop websites quickly and efficiently. The exceptional speed and performance of the IDE have been praised by users, surpassing other popular IDEs like Eclipse. The versatile nature of IntelliJ IDEA makes it widely used for Java development, including building Android applications, maintaining version control, and integrating with tools like DB connections and Maven. Organizations have found IntelliJ IDEA to be the standard IDE for code development, reducing development time and offering enterprise features not found in other IDEs. Freelance Java developers also find IntelliJ IDEA highly beneficial in terms of faster backend code writing, learning new skills, and improving programming proficiency. With its compatibility with JVM-based languages like Java, Scala, and Kotlin, IntelliJ IDEA provides better code formatting, Git support, and unit test case running. The robustness and user-friendliness of the IDE make it a preferred choice for software engineers working on Java and Spring-based projects. Additionally, IntelliJ IDEA's customizable nature and strong reliability have made it a trusted tool among developers across industries such as healthcare, web application development, and enterprise application development.

Clean and customizable user interface: Users have consistently praised the clean, customizable, and intuitive user interface of IntelliJ IDEA. Several reviewers have mentioned their appreciation for the ability to personalize the IDE according to their own needs, allowing them to work efficiently and stay organized.

Extensive plugin support: Many users have highlighted the extensive plugin support in IntelliJ IDEA as a major advantage. The wide range of plugins available, such as those for Markdown documents, OpenApi specifications, and PlantUML diagrams, enhance the development experience by providing additional functionalities and increasing productivity.

Excellent language support with code completion: Reviewers have frequently commended IntelliJ IDEA for its excellent support for different programming languages. They specifically mention the auto-completion feature based on DOM model and browser that allows them to complete code quickly and efficiently. This feature has been particularly useful for completing projects within tight deadlines or complex coding tasks.

Default Number of Plugins: Some users have expressed that the default number of plugins in IntelliJ IDEA is excessive, and they suggest starting with a smaller set of plugins and allowing users to add them later according to their needs.

Activiti Workflows Support: The Activiti workflows support in IntelliJ IDEA is considered lacking by some users, especially on complex projects. They feel that improvements are needed to enhance its functionality and usability.

Dependency Management Reliability: Dependency management on complex projects is not considered reliable by some users. This issue may cause difficulties in managing project dependencies effectively and can hinder development progress.

Users recommend trying the free edition of IntelliJ IDEA and learning its shortcuts and menus to enhance productivity. They suggest that Eclipse users switch to IntelliJ, except for Android developers. IntelliJ is highly recommended for professional developers and those working with a limited number of technologies. To improve the experience, it is suggested to have 16GB of RAM. According to users, IntelliJ's pricing is worth it if a company's revenue exceeds the annual cost. It is highly recommended for Java and related projects, especially if there have been issues with Eclipse. Users believe that IntelliJ is the only true multi-role IDE for Mac users and advise learning its keyboard shortcuts. They also highlight the value offered by plugins for IntelliJ.

While Visual Studio is recommended specifically for .NET development, users generally recommend IntelliJ for other use cases. They find that IntelliJ supports multiple languages and frameworks out of the box, making it versatile and worth trying out. For general Java development tasks, users find IntelliJ much easier and cleaner than Netbeans and Eclipse.

Lastly, users appreciate that IntelliJ is easy to use overall.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 53)
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Dushyant Pathak (DKP) | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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 applications and tries to own the entire development process from within the IDE.
Tung Vu | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
It is much more friendly to use and has more features in terms of leading to more efficient and productive software engineers. I prefer the interface as well as the code Completion/code refactoring and error suggestions
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
PyCharm is for Python, but otherwise similar to IntelliJ IDEA. Both IDEs are great for their intended languages. I selected Intellij IDEA because of its support for Scala. I selected Intellij IDEA over Spark SBT because it is faster and more convenient.
Nitin Gupta | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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 various developer friendly plugins which make it a great choice.
Chris Barretto | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
IntelliJ has the richest and most complete set of features out of all the IDEs I've tried. There is the most compatibility across different languages and caters to different compilation strategies. The updates come very regularly, so we know that the product is constantly evolving and getting better. It is the most used across our engineering org.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.

You can enable themes and create shortcuts that make your development easy and interesting. Lot of the things are abstracted so you won't need another tool. For example, you won't need git desktop if you're using IntelliJ IDEA.
David Tanner | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
Tharsanan Kurukulasingam | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
Work on large projects--Eclipse is an easy-to-use IDE when it comes to handling complex and large projects. (Workspace concept in Eclipse is useful in this case.)
May 13, 2021

My best IDE

Balázs Kiss | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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 as the other JetBrains tools, combined :)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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 breeze.
Dinesh Pabbi | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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 version control, LESS, SAAS, Maven to name but a few.
3. A more complete package. Its HTML, CSS, and Javascript editor are better as compared to others. That coupled with packages , features and other small customization make it an overall better package for software development.
4. Costlier. This does not need explanation. Other IDEs which I used were open source and hence free. This is costly.
5. Has a better UI.
A. Kıvanç Güler | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Jdeveloper: So slow, crashes many time, leak Spring framework developer productivity support. Best performance with recommended Oracle SDK Distributions and not comparable in terms of debugging.
  • Eclipse: More J2ee oriented cant act as Intellij IDEA cloud native development with java approach
  • Visual Studio Code: Intellij IDEA is strong on Java language support and best ide for java development, vs code is good for frontend languages and dotnet and dotnet core
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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 to IntelliJ IDEA.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I have used Eclipse also in the past. But it is slow compared to IntelliJ, it does not offer as many features as IntelliJ offers, and the integrations with third-party tools is not great. But they are open-source and they don't charge anything whereas IntelliJ charges $500 per year for one license.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
IntelliJ is a full featured IDES and has the most advanced set of features for developing web and desktop applications. It supports integration of the Spring framework which is necessary for web development. It supports web app scripting languages and web development frameworks. One of the better strengths of IntelliJ is its default code compilation which is much faster and better than that of Eclipse. IntelliJ can actually help you improve your coding. For instance, Smart Completion provides a list of the most relevant symbols applicable in your current context. This as well as other completions constantly learn from your coding practices and moves your most frequently used packages and classes to the top of the list, so that you can select the right option faster.
Then there is Chain completion which is even smarter than the Smart Completion. It lists all the applicable symbols by making use of get methods which makes it even faster. Finally, there are many out-of-the-box features which make IntelliJ IDEA a truly intelligent IDE.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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 2.7 (latest Scala is 2.12). Eclipse has minimum integration but it's bloated and even more buggy than IntelliJ. Finally, VSCode could become a real contender in the future if the Metals plugin for VSCode gets better and keeps being developed.
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