Android Studio vs. IntelliJ IDEA

Name: IntelliJ IDEA vs Android Studio, Which Development Tool is Best?
Uploaded: 2021-02-05T20:16:34.000Z
Duration: 5 min 35 s
Description: IntelliJ IDEA and Android Studio are both popular tools for application development, but which one is right for your business? We discuss the strengths and limitations of each tool.

Android Studio

92 Reviews and Ratings

IntelliJ IDEA

348 Reviews and Ratings

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting Price
Android Studio	Score 9.0 out of 10	N/A	Android Studio is an official Android development integrated development environment (IDE) for mobile application development in the Android operating system developed by Google. Android Studio is based on Jetbrains'	N/A
IntelliJ IDEA	Score 9.4 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

Pricing

Android Studio

IntelliJ IDEA

Editions & Modules

No answers on this topic

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

Offerings

Pricing Offerings
Android Studio	IntelliJ IDEA
Free Trial
No	Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No	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

More Pricing Information

Community Pulse
	Android Studio	IntelliJ IDEA
Considered Both Products	Android Studio Jose Perri Director of Engineering and Product Development Chose Android Studio Although there are alternatives on the market that propose creating ANDROID and IOS APPs in a single interface at the same time, in our case the experience was not positive since we had to access very specific functionalities. There was no other solution than to develop the … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Android Studio I initially did code in Eclipse to develop an android app that is generally used for web apps and then I moved into Android Studio. That's the biggest thing I ever did I think. Android Studio has lots more functionalities and plugins than any other product. Now I am completely … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Android Studio I am primarily a Java developer so many of the IDEs I have used are specifically made for Java development. I have used IntelliJ IDEA, Eclipse, and Netbeans for Java development but Android Studio is far better for Android development specifically and it also has support for … Incentivized Helpful? PC Peter Chapman Senior System Architect Chose Android Studio Android Studio is as good for Android development, as Visual Studio has been for Windows development. It is my first choice for Android development because it includes an excellent suite of tools and support for Android. Its built in refactoring and code fixes are much more … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Android Studio Android Studio is the best possible offering to make android based apps. It's a product by Google and the official integrated development environment for android app development. That's why it is able to offer the easiest to learn and simplest coding environment to developers. … Incentivized Helpful? TK Tom Kunz Owner Chose Android Studio We personally did not try too many others because the staff who we hired to take on mobile development were already familiar with it and were able to get going quickly with it. They and all their peers had already worked through others and we were content to trust their … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Android Studio We use Android Studio for Android app development because it is the most efficient and official Integrated development environment for Android. Incentivized Helpful? Mary Paula Software Engineer Chose Android Studio Eclipse Incentivized Helpful? KV Kunal Verma Software Engineer Intern Chose Android Studio Android application development can also be done using the IntelliJ IDE. It is a very good IDE but it is paid for professional and commercial product development. However, IntelliJ IDE is available with a student license for limited application development features. Thus … Incentivized Helpful? TW Tharanga Wickramsinghe Software Engineer Chose Android Studio Debugging and testing are easy in Android Studio. The errors of the codes can be found easily in Android Studio. It has superior community support. Incentivized Helpful? BB Barry Burd Professor Chose Android Studio Eclipse used to be the official IDE for Android. Since Android Studio is now the official IDE, and since Eclipse is no longer supported for Android, I have no choice but to use Android Studio. Of course, Android Studio has more features than Eclipse had because (1) Android is … Incentivized Helpful? Chiyars Malhotra Android Developer Chose Android Studio Basically Eclipse is a tool where you have to do all on your own from start to end. Android Studio is using its Artificial Intelligence techniques to enhance our coding experience and offer better , suggestions to create methods, variables, classes, etc. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Android Studio Microsoft VSC is a great product that can be adapted for Android development, but it requires significantly more effort than using Android Studio. Incentivized Helpful?	IntelliJ IDEA Gaurav Gosavi Staff Software Engineer Chose IntelliJ IDEA In summary, IntelliJ is more polished and feature-rich out of the box, especially for Java development. Eclipse is extensible but can be rougher around the edges. IntelliJ costs money for advanced features, while Eclipse is free. IntelliJ offers many developers a better … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous 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? 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 Anonymous 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? 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? Verified User Anonymous Chose IntelliJ IDEA Eclipse Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose IntelliJ IDEA 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 Incentivized Helpful? LS Lakshita Salian Manager Chose IntelliJ IDEA Intellij is faster and smoother. SO it saves development time Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose IntelliJ IDEA Eclipse, Microsoft Visual Studio Code and Notepad++ Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose IntelliJ IDEA 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. Incentivized Helpful? Tung Vu Senior Software Engineer Chose IntelliJ IDEA 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 … Incentivized Helpful? Nitin Gupta Salesforce/Apttus Developer 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 … Incentivized Helpful? Chris Barretto Engineering Manager Chose IntelliJ IDEA 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 … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous 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? 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? Tharsanan Kurukulasingam Software Engineer 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. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous 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? A. Kıvanç Güler Senior Solution Engineer - Tanzu Chose IntelliJ IDEA 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 … Incentivized Helpful? AJ Ashutosh Jha Student Chose IntelliJ IDEA Eclipse [doesn't] have smart suggestions feature, nor [does] it ha[ve] column selection mode. So, overall productivity decreases. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose IntelliJ IDEA IntelliJ is very much focused on user-friendliness which I'm very fond of. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose IntelliJ IDEA Much more functionality and freedom than in Eclipse, but it cost you money while the second is free. Incentivized Helpful? SN Sumanthkumar Nagamalli Technical consultant Chose IntelliJ IDEA 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 … 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 Anonymous Chose IntelliJ IDEA 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 … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous 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?

TrustRadius Insights
	Android Studio	IntelliJ IDEA
Highlights	Research Team Insight Published July 16, 2020 Android Studio and IntelliJ IDEA are both development tools designed to help development teams create applications with ease. Android Studio is actually based on IntelliJ IDEA, but specializes in developing for the Android platform. In contrast, IntelliJ IDEA is a more generalist IDE that helps developers create code for any platform. Both are popular with businesses of all sizes, depending on the use case of the organization. Features Both Android Studio and IntelliJ IDEA can be used to develop new applications, but they have a few standout features that set them apart from each other. Android Studio is a specialized mobile app development tool for the Android platform. In addition to offering basic IDE features, Android Studio provides features that make it easier to interact with mobile functions such as push notifications, or integrations with cameras. Businesses using Android Studio are able to easily create and publish Android applications. IntelliJ IDEA is a generalist IDE with plugins for specific platforms. For example, a user creating an Android application may use the Android plugin for IntelliJ IDEA. The generalist approach of IntelliJ IDEA allows businesses to use it to develop for multiple platforms, using plugins to select what specialized features they need. Limitations Though Android Studio and IntelliJ IDEA have many surface level similarities, they also have some limitations that are important to consider. Android Studio is built for Android application development, so it has great tools for that platform, but no special features for other platforms. This makes Android Studio a poor choice for businesses that want to develop for other platforms. Android Studio may still be a good complementary choice to another IDE for businesses that develop Android applications among other things. IntelliJ IDEA supports development for multiple platforms, but is missing some of the specialized features included in Android Studio, such as APK support. Android Studio may be a better choice for businesses that develop primarily Android Applications. It is worth noting that Android Studio is based on IntelliJ IDEA, so for businesses that develop for multiple platforms, IntelliJ IDEA still offers some support for Android development in addition to other platforms. Pricing Android Studio is a free to use development tool. In contrast, IntelliJ IDEA starts at $499.00 per year with a discount for each year beyond the first.

Best Alternatives
	Android Studio	IntelliJ IDEA
Small Businesses	Swiftify Score 9.0 out of 10	PyCharm Score 9.2 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies	Swiftify Score 9.0 out of 10	PyCharm Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises	Swiftify Score 9.0 out of 10	PyCharm Score 9.2 out of 10
All Alternatives	View all alternatives	View all alternatives

User Ratings
	Android Studio	IntelliJ IDEA
Likelihood to Recommend	8.6 (0 ratings)	9.7 (0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew	- (0 ratings)	5.0 (0 ratings)
Usability	- (0 ratings)	9.1 (0 ratings)
Support Rating	9.8 (0 ratings)	8.9 (0 ratings)
Implementation Rating	- (0 ratings)	9.0 (0 ratings)

User Testimonials
	Android Studio	IntelliJ IDEA
Likelihood to Recommend	Android Studio is the only platform you should consider for Android development. I have found that nothing else comes close in terms of documentation or support. There is always the temptation to develop for Android using a cross platform toolkit, such as Xamarin, but unless your app is incredibly simple, you will find your self wrestling with the toolkit more than actually creating your product. If you have any Android projects still in Eclipse, you should upgrade these to Android Studio - the backwards compatibility for older versions of Android is very good, with issues only occurring with debugging on older (Lollipop or below) devices. The only scenario Android Studio is not suitable for is cross-platform development. There is no way to share code between iOS, macOS, or Windows projects with Android Studio, unless you are developing a game in C++. If you wish to develop cross platform mobile apps, I suggest Microsoft Visual Studio. Incentivized PC Peter Chapman Senior System Architect Read full review	IntelliJ IDEA is very well suited for developers working on Java, Javascript, and related technologies. It is the best IDE I've found so far for software development in Java. IntelliJ IDEA is specifically well suited for web software development using Java as it provides default configurations for web frameworks like Spring and Spring Boot. For other use cases, I feel it is more than good enough. Incentivized Animesh Kumar Senior Member of Technical Staff Read full review
Pros	It is very lightweight and resource management is done pretty well in this IDE. It boots up very fast as compared to other development IDEs. It is not a memory hungry IDE. Even novices can work with this IDE very easily. Incentivized KV Kunal Verma Software Engineer Intern Read full review	Compared to Eclipse, basically it is a easier to learn which results in faster learning curve. Good for small or mid-sized projects. Generally speaking developers can be productive in a short training and use. Very rich plug-in capability, such as out of the box support for version control systems. User friendly interface. Responsive and interactive than other IDE tools. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Cons	Debugging is not that great, it can show some specific details for a better understanding of the issue. It is a RAM eater tool, its hard to do multitask along with the android studio. Sometimes after updating the android studio, we have to face so many random issues with the SDK or codes. Incentivized LS Lokesh Singh Jr. App Developer Read full review	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. Incentivized Dhruba Jyoti Nag Associate Read full review
Likelihood to Renew	No answers on this topic	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
Usability	It has improved over the versions, and it continues to do so. I have no problems using Android Studio and I think that it's quite a user-friendly software. Verified User Anonymous Read full review	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
Support Rating	The support of the community is very good. You can find many solutions on sites like StackOverflow and Brazilian sites like GUJ, for example. Google documentation about Android Studio is very good too. I have some Android developer friends, so they have the knowledge to support me when I need it. Incentivized Marcelo Araujo Desenvolvedor de software Read full review	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
Implementation Rating	No answers on this topic	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
Alternatives Considered	I am primarily a Java developer so many of the IDEs I have used are specifically made for Java development. I have used IntelliJ IDEA, Eclipse, and NetBeans for Java development but Android Studio is far better for Android development specifically and it also has support for things like Flutter development. VS Code is quickly becoming popular across languages but Android Studio is still at the top in my opinion. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	In summary, IntelliJ is more polished and feature-rich out of the box, especially for Java development. Eclipse is extensible but can be rougher around the edges. IntelliJ costs money for advanced features, while Eclipse is free. IntelliJ offers many developers a better experience, but Eclipse remains a viable open-source alternative. Incentivized Gaurav Gosavi Staff Software Engineer Read full review
Return on Investment	Due to Android Studio's day by day improvement, our company is making Android applications in more and more effective and efficient ways. 24x7 support from Google and JetBrains is making our work running 24x7 smoother, and making our clients happier and happier day by day. Due to the awesome animation and transition tricks, we are providing our clients more than they expected. Incentivized Chiyars Malhotra Android Developer Read full review	Boosts productivity: IntelliJ IDEA is efficient to operate, and with its shortcuts and customization, the possibilities to improve your productivity are endless. Clean code: IntelliJ IDEA will catch or syntax errors, or even suggest a way something could be written better, or call our your duplicated code or unused imports. An easy learning curve for new guys: It's much easier to use than some of the competition, so it helps the new guys hit the ground running by being easy to operate and understand. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
ScreenShots		IntelliJ IDEA Screenshots

Features

Limitations

Pricing