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 9.4 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
Microsoft Visual Studio Code	Score 9.0 out of 10	N/A	Microsoft offers Visual Studio Code, a text editor that supports code editing, debugging, IntelliSense syntax highlighting, and other features.	N/A

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 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?	Microsoft Visual Studio Code CR Carlos Rizzo Software Engineer Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code The other IDE that I use is Eclipse. Comparing both, Microsoft Visual Studio Code it clearly wins in resource consuming. I can have open many instances of Microsoft Visual Studio Code and the memory ram usage it doesn't go very high. Another point where I prefer Microsoft … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code Microsoft Visual Studio Code provides more flexibility and supports easy integration to different platforms (including cloud). It is more modular and lighter application as compared to other integrated development environments. Microsoft Visual Studio Code is easy to learn and … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code prior to Visual Studio Code, I was using sublime text, which was not the most effective in terms of third-party libraries and complex debugging, so I switched to Visual Studio Code where I got a positive as a developer. it is having all the features and third-party libraries to … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code Far better than eclipse IDE. Eclipse takes so much space, and it is slow. Whereas Vs Code IDE is so fast and having good UI as compared to Eclipse. I help to work efficiently and is also highlight the syntax in good way by recommending in editor. Microsoft Visual Studio Code … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code Visual Studio code UI is very handy. Extension feasibility is good Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code 1. More features compared to Notepad++ 2. fast performance compare to Android Studio 3.More and usefull extensions then other two 4. Easy to use and everyone can start using it instantly 5. Version Control system is top notch 6.If you start using it , you will forget other ides … Incentivized Helpful? Bimal Subedi Software Engineer Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code Microsoft Visual Studio Code is a combined form of the above-mentioned products i.e. one product, many applications. Eclipse is suitable for java development, PyCharm is mainly for Python development whereas Android Studio is for Android applications development but in … Incentivized Helpful? ANurag Tamrakar Software Engineer - DevOps Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code Sublime Text and IntelliJ IDEA Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code It has some much more functionality than Notepad++, all the addons make editing scripts a breeze Incentivized Helpful? Tao Mihiranga Graphic Designer and Web Developer 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 … Incentivized Helpful? Satbir Singh MIS Analyst Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code It has [the] right balance of solutions for [a] wide range of problems. Atom or Notepad++ are lighter but [have fewer] features, [Microsoft] Visual Studio [Code] is full of features but [a] tad heavier. 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? Sean Patterson Software Development Director 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 … Incentivized Helpful? Moris Mendez Ing. de Sistemas Informaticos Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code All the previously listed are incredible development environments that perfectly fulfill this function, but [Microsoft] Visual Studio Code goes one step ahead by providing flexibility, customization and adaptability to development environments with its own methodology, for all … Incentivized Helpful? Mark Orlando Senior Developer Analyst Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code 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 … 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? Verified User Anonymous 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 … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous 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 Anonymous Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code I have been using vim as both editor and IDE for development projects for a long time until I met Visual Studio Code. VS Code can provide the editing power of vim through a plugin, plus many other benefits, thus it can easily replace vim in most development use. 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 Anonymous 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 … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code User interface and integration to other tools is very straightforward and easy to use. You can find [third] party [development components] very easy for Microsoft. You can code a variety of applications using the same framework without installing any plugins or extensions (Web … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code Every IDE has almost the same features but being lightweight is a plus point for the IDE so that you can run on any hardware with good speed. VS Code has ultimate features. Incentivized Helpful? Ryan McGarry Vice President of Research, Head Neuroscientist Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code Microsoft Visual Studio Code is more lightweight than most other options, such as Spyder and MATLAB. These other applications provide strong benefits such as a useful user interface that displays information about variables in in your workspace, as well as a window for built-in … 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 9.3 out of 10	BBEdit Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies	PyCharm Score 9.3 out of 10	Vim Score 8.3 out of 10
Enterprises	PyCharm Score 9.3 out of 10	Vim Score 8.3 out of 10
All Alternatives	View all alternatives	View all alternatives

User Ratings
	IntelliJ IDEA	Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Likelihood to Recommend	9.7 (0 ratings)	8.5 (0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew	5.0 (0 ratings)	9.4 (0 ratings)
Usability	9.1 (0 ratings)	8.5 (0 ratings)
Support Rating	8.9 (0 ratings)	9.7 (0 ratings)
Implementation Rating	9.0 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)

User Testimonials
	IntelliJ IDEA	Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Likelihood to Recommend	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	If your Source Control Software is Team Foundation Server then skip Visual Studio Code. If you're using GitHub and are creating small projects Visual Studio Code is the way to go. If you need to create a large, enterprise-level application, Visual Studio Code makes it easier to set up interactions between related projects (client & server). If you're interested in getting back to the old way of using the command line to create projects and you know what to enter in the console window then Visual Studio Code is great. Visual Studio Code is a better choice if you don't know the console commands and prefer to make selections from a menu. Incentivized Mark Orlando Senior Developer Analyst Read full review
Pros	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	Robust plugin architecture replete with fantastic add-ons that make developer life delightful. Integrated Terminal window allows you to stay in one application to perform most required tasks. Customization options are robust. It is easy to modify VS Code to your own specifications. It's free! Hard to believe such a well made, well maintained, robust software is a free download. Command+P/Command+Shift+P key commands will improve your workflow dramatically. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Cons	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	Unlike for most languages I have used, Ruby and Rails support available for Code users isn't great. The most popular Ruby extension is unofficial, and leaves much to desire. As an example, code navigation even with language server Solargraph installed isn't as good as IntelliJ's RubyMine. Even there is quite good support for a language or a framework, it is almost never as good as a dedicated IDE for it. In terms of the sheer number of features available, IntelliJ IDEs handily beat Code. Microsoft has close-sourced some of the extensions it develops for Code itself, e.g. Pylance for Python, and that has not been perceived as a good move for open-source. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Likelihood to Renew	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	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	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	Looking at our current implementation, Microsoft Visual Studio Code is perfect for writing code and performing debug operations. Integration with SVN repository is easy and changes can be tracked effectively. Microsoft Visual Studio Code supports developers to write code productively using syntax check and easy customization. Microsoft Visual Studio Code also provides support for IntelliSense which prompts suggestions for code completion. It is easy to step through code using interactive debugger to inspect the root cause of error quickly. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Support Rating	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	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	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	No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered	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	All the previously listed are incredible development environments that perfectly fulfill this function, but [Microsoft] Visual Studio Code goes one step ahead by providing flexibility, customization and adaptability to development environments with its own methodology, for all this productivity. of the work team is greatly increased helping to achieve the objectives set in the organization. Incentivized Moris Mendez Ing. de Sistemas Informaticos Read full review
Return on Investment	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	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