IntelliJ IDEA vs Eclipse: Which Java IDE to Use
Pick IntelliJ IDEA if you want code analysis, refactoring and Spring or Kotlin support that work the moment you open a project. Pick Eclipse if you need a fully free, open-source IDE that you assemble from plugins, or your team already runs on it.
Most Java developers have already chosen: in JRebel’s 2025 Java Developer Productivity Report, 84% of respondents used IntelliJ IDEA, 31% VS Code and 28% Eclipse (respondents could name more than one). A year earlier the split was 71% IntelliJ IDEA and 39% Eclipse.
One thing changed in late 2025 that most comparisons still miss: there is no separate IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition any more. Since version 2025.3, IntelliJ IDEA is a single download. Its core is free for any use, including commercial work, and the former Ultimate features need a subscription.
IntelliJ IDEA vs Eclipse at a glance
| IntelliJ IDEA | Eclipse IDE | |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | JetBrains | Eclipse Foundation |
| License and price | Free core; Ultimate features $199/year for individuals, $719/user/year for companies | Free, open source (EPL 2.0) |
| Download | One installer since 2025.3 | Pick a package (Java, Enterprise Java and Web, C/C++, …) |
| Releases | Three a year (2026.1, 2026.2, …) | Four a year (latest: 2026-09) |
| Code analysis | Hundreds of inspections, on by default | Compiler errors, warnings and Quick Fix |
| Spring and Jakarta EE | Built into Ultimate; basic support free | Spring Tools and Jakarta EE tooling as plugins or packages |
| Kotlin | First-class (JetBrains makes Kotlin) | Weak |
| AI | JetBrains AI built in; Copilot and Claude Code plugins | GitHub Copilot for Eclipse plugin |
| Plugins | JetBrains Marketplace | Eclipse Marketplace |
Prices are from jetbrains.com/idea/buy in October 2026; the individual price drops to $159 in year two and $119 from year three.
What changed: one IntelliJ IDEA download
JetBrains announced the move in July 2025 and shipped it with 2025.3 in December 2025:
- One installer, one update stream. Everyone downloads the same IDE. Community Edition builds stop at 2025.2.
- The free tier grew. Everything Community Edition had (Java, Kotlin, Groovy, Maven, Gradle, Git, the debugger) stays free, plus basic Spring and Jakarta EE highlighting, the Spring Boot project wizard, database connections and full SQL support.
- The subscription adds the rest: full Spring and Jakarta EE support, profiling, web frameworks and the other former Ultimate features. There is a 30-day trial, and students and teachers get it free.
- A lapsed subscription doesn’t lock you out. The IDE keeps working with the free feature set.
- The platform is still open source. Anyone can build IntelliJ from the source on GitHub.
So the old advice “start with Community Edition” now means “download IntelliJ IDEA and don’t start the trial”.
Day-to-day use
Setup and project creation
IntelliJ IDEA opens a Maven or Gradle project directly: point it at the pom.xml or build.gradle and it imports modules, dependencies and run configurations. The New Project wizard creates Spring Boot projects in the free tier.
Eclipse asks you to choose a package first. “Eclipse IDE for Java Developers” covers plain Java, Maven (through m2e) and Gradle (through Buildship); “Eclipse IDE for Enterprise Java and Web Developers” adds Jakarta EE and web tooling. Everything else comes from the Eclipse Marketplace. You work inside a workspace folder that holds one or more projects and your settings.
Navigation
IntelliJ IDEA puts everything behind Search Everywhere: press Shift twice and type a class, file, symbol, setting or action. Go to Class is Ctrl+N (Cmd+O on macOS).
Eclipse spreads the same jobs across a few commands: Open Type (Ctrl+Shift+T), Open Resource (Ctrl+Shift+R) and Quick Access (Ctrl+3) for commands and views. Its window layouts are called perspectives: the Java perspective for editing, the Debug perspective for debugging. You can rearrange each one, and switching between them changes the whole window.
Learning curve
IntelliJ IDEA shows more on its own: inspections underline problems as you type, and Alt+Enter offers a fix. Eclipse expects you to know where things are, but its Quick Fix (Ctrl+1) covers the same ground for compiler errors. Developers who have used Eclipse for years often prefer it because they have shaped it exactly as they want.
Performance and memory
IntelliJ IDEA indexes a project when you first open it. On a large codebase that takes minutes and keeps the CPU busy. After that, search, navigation and refactoring are fast, because they read the index.
Eclipse usually starts faster and indexes as it goes. Its own incremental Java compiler builds on every save, so errors show up across the whole project right away, and you can even run code while other files still have compile errors. Plugins are where Eclipse slows down: each one adds memory, and a badly written one can stall the IDE.
Both run on the JVM, so the heap limit decides how they cope with big projects:
- IntelliJ IDEA: Help › Change Memory Settings, which writes
-Xmxto theidea64.vmoptionsfile. - Eclipse: edit
-Xmxineclipse.ini, next to the Eclipse executable.
JetBrains lists 8 GB of total RAM as the minimum for IntelliJ IDEA; large multi-module projects need more in either IDE.
Code analysis and refactoring
Code analysis and refactoring are where IntelliJ IDEA and Eclipse differ most.
IntelliJ IDEA runs hundreds of inspections in the background: unused code, possible null dereferences, loops that could be streams, misuse of framework APIs. You can tune them per project and check the profile into Git so the whole team sees the same warnings. Its completion ranks suggestions by context, and smart completion (Ctrl+Shift+Space) lists only values of the expected type.
Eclipse relies on its compiler and Quick Fix. Core Java refactorings such as Rename (Alt+Shift+R), Extract Method, Inline and Change Method Signature work well and have for a long time.
The gap shows when a change crosses file types. Renaming a class in IntelliJ IDEA can also update its name in Spring configuration, application.properties, string literals and comments, and it shows you every change before applying it. Eclipse handles the Java side just as safely but finds fewer references outside .java files unless a plugin teaches it the framework.
| Task | IntelliJ IDEA | Eclipse |
|---|---|---|
| Rename a class used in Java code | Safe, with preview | Safe, with preview |
| Rename a class also named in config files | Finds framework and text references | Mostly Java references only |
| Extract method from a block with generics | Infers parameters and return type | Works; complex blocks may need cleanup |
| Safe delete | Checks every usage, including framework ones | Checks Java usages |
| Spot a bug before compiling | Inspections | Compiler warnings |
AI coding assistants
IntelliJ IDEA ships JetBrains AI: the AI Assistant chat and the Junie coding agent. It has a free tier with a cloud quota and paid plans from $10 a month. GitHub Copilot has a JetBrains plugin, and Anthropic’s Claude Code has an official JetBrains plugin that shows its edits in the IDE’s diff viewer.
Eclipse gets AI through plugins. GitHub’s own Copilot for Eclipse has had code completion and chat generally available since spring 2025 and agent mode since July 2025, and GitHub open-sourced it in May 2026.
Terminal agents such as Claude Code and Codex work beside either IDE, because they read and edit the files on disk. In one small team’s 866 agent-written pull requests, 95% came from Claude Code; Zest shows which agents and models each engineer uses, whatever IDE they open.
Plugins and framework support
The JetBrains Marketplace is smaller and more uniform: JetBrains sells the IDE and maintains the main language and framework plugins itself. The Eclipse Marketplace is larger and older. You will find a plugin for almost any legacy system there, but many haven’t been updated in years, so check the last release date before installing.
- Spring Boot: IntelliJ IDEA’s subscription adds full Spring support: bean navigation,
application.propertiescompletion and checks, endpoint lists. The free tier has the project wizard and basic highlighting. In Eclipse, install Spring Tools from the Spring team. - Jakarta EE and Quarkus: built into IntelliJ IDEA’s subscription; in Eclipse, use the Enterprise Java and Web Developers package plus vendor plugins.
- Kotlin: JetBrains created Kotlin, and IntelliJ IDEA is its reference IDE. Kotlin support in Eclipse lags far behind.
- Scala: the JetBrains Scala plugin is free and the usual choice; the Scala IDE for Eclipse is no longer maintained.
- Gradle and Maven: both IDEs handle them; IntelliJ IDEA also completes and checks Gradle Kotlin DSL scripts.
- Beyond Java: Eclipse is still common for C/C++ (Eclipse CDT), embedded toolchains built on it, and Eclipse RCP and modeling tools. IntelliJ IDEA’s subscription adds JavaScript, TypeScript and SQL tooling and plugins for other languages.
Which one should you use?
- Learning Java: either works. IntelliJ IDEA’s inspections teach good habits as you type; students can get the full subscription free.
- Spring Boot or Kotlin teams: IntelliJ IDEA. The subscription pays off if you use the Spring support every day.
- No license budget, or open-source tooling only: Eclipse, or IntelliJ IDEA’s free tier if plain Java and Kotlin are enough.
- Eclipse RCP, plugin development, embedded C/C++ or modeling: Eclipse. That ecosystem is built on it.
- A team on Eclipse that works well: stay. Switching costs a few weeks of slower work, and IntelliJ IDEA’s Eclipse keymap shortens them if you do move.
Frequently asked questions
Is IntelliJ IDEA free?
Yes, for the core IDE. Since 2025.3, the single IntelliJ IDEA download is free for commercial and non-commercial use with Java, Kotlin, Groovy, Maven, Gradle, Git and basic Spring support. The former Ultimate features need a subscription: $199 a year for individuals and $719 per user a year for companies in October 2026.
Is IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition still available?
No new versions. Community Edition builds ended with 2025.2; its features are now the free tier of the unified IntelliJ IDEA. The open-source platform code is still on GitHub if you want to build it yourself.
Which IDE is better for beginners learning Java?
IntelliJ IDEA gets most beginners writing working code sooner, because its inspections and fixes explain problems as they appear. Eclipse makes you learn how a workspace, a build path and plugins fit together, which some courses still prefer.
Can I use both IntelliJ IDEA and Eclipse?
Yes. Both open Maven and Gradle projects, so the same repository works in either. IntelliJ IDEA can also import Eclipse project files and offers an Eclipse keymap.
How does VS Code compare for Java?
VS Code runs Java through Microsoft’s Extension Pack for Java, whose language server is built on Eclipse’s Java tooling (JDT). It is light and good for mixed-language work. In JRebel’s 2025 report, 31% of respondents used it, and 68% of those whose main IDE was IntelliJ IDEA also used VS Code on the side. For large Java codebases, its refactoring and framework support are still behind both full IDEs.