4 Free & Open Source Alternatives to JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA (2026)

Compare 4 free and open-source alternatives to JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA: VSCodium, Apache NetBeans, and BlueJ (+1 more). Pros, cons, pricing, and screenshots tested 2026.

JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA

Freemium ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 4.5

An Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for professional development in Java and Kotlin, designed to maximize developer productivity with clever code completion, static code analysis, and refactorings.

Pricing Freemium

Alternatives 4 free options

Category Developer Tools

Rating 4.5 / 5

💡

Why people look for alternatives JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA has a free tier with limitations. Many users seek fully free or open-source alternatives that offer the same capabilities without paywalled features or usage caps.

Visit JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA →

Quick Comparison

Tool	Pricing	Best for	Rating
VSCodium	Free & Open Source	Developers prioritizing privacy, software freedom, and predictable tooling	★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 4.5
Apache NetBeans	Free & Open Source	Java, C/C++, PHP, HTML5, CSS application developers	★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 4.0
B BlueJ	Free & Open Source	Beginners and students learning Java and object-oriented programming	★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 4.0
E Eclipse IDE	Free & Open Source	Developers creating Java applications and other software with a customizable IDE	★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 4.0

Detailed Reviews

VSCodium

An open-source, community-driven code editor based on Visual Studio Code, meticulously removing all proprietary components, telemetry, and tracking features.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 4.5

Free & Open Source Best for: Developers prioritizing privacy, software freedom, and predictable tooling

Completely free with no subscriptions, paid tiers, or feature limitations.

1 screenshot — click to enlarge

Screenshot 1

✓ Pros

• No telemetry or tracking, ensuring user privacy and data security
• Fully open-source and MIT-licensed
• Retains all powerful features of Visual Studio Code
• Community-driven development
• Supports a wider range of architectures
• Uses the Open VSX Registry for extensions, an open-source marketplace

✕ Cons

• Requires more manual configuration compared to official VS Code builds
• Manual configuration of repositories needed for some Linux distributions (e.g., Deb and RPM installers)

Apache NetBeans

Apache NetBeans is a powerful, open-source integrated development environment (IDE) for Java, C/C++, PHP, JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS, offering smart editing and refactoring tools.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 4.0

Free & Open Source Best for: Java, C/C++, PHP, HTML5, CSS application developers

Free for commercial and non-commercial use under the Apache license.

1 screenshot — click to enlarge

Screenshot 1

✓ Pros

• Simple and logical user interface with multiple UI preferences.
• Excellent for building and learning Java-based applications.
• Fast and smart editing with syntax highlighting, semantic analysis, and refactoring.
• Provides editors, wizards, and templates for multiple languages including Java, PHP, HTML5, CSS.
• Cross-platform compatibility (Windows, Linux, macOS, BSD).
• Excellent Maven project management and simple run configuration.
• Built-in support for Ant, Maven, and Gradle.
• Inbuilt assistance for Subversion, Git, and Mercurial version control.
• Built-in drag-and-drop features for GUI applications using Swing and JavaFX.
• Consistently supports the latest versions of JDK, JavaEE, and JavaFX.

✕ Cons

• Can freeze and stop working for minutes occasionally.
• Can be slow at times.
• High computational requirements, demands a lot of machine power.
• Fewer plugins available compared to IntelliJ IDEA and Eclipse.

B

BlueJ

An integrated development environment (IDE) for the Java programming language, primarily designed for educational purposes and small-scale software development.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 4.0

Free & Open Source Best for: Beginners and students learning Java and object-oriented programming

Free and open source under GPL-2.0-or-later with the Classpath exception.

2 screenshots — click to enlarge

Screenshot 1

Screenshot 2

✓ Pros

• Simple and intuitive interface for beginners
• Designed specifically for teaching object-oriented programming
• Interactive environment encourages experimentation and exploration
• Visualizes class structure and objects graphically
• Features unique scope highlighting for improved code readability
• Allows inspection of objects and invocation of methods during runtime
• Supports direct invocation of Java expressions without compilation
• Cross-platform compatibility

✕ Cons

• Limited features for advanced users compared to professional IDEs
• Lacks advanced tools like comprehensive code completion
• Primarily suitable for small-scale projects, not large-scale development
• Some pedagogical "helper" classes may not work outside the BlueJ environment

E

Eclipse IDE

An integrated development environment used in computer programming, primarily for Java applications, but extensible to other languages via plugins.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 4.0

Free & Open Source Best for: Developers creating Java applications and other software with a customizable IDE

Free and open-source.

1 screenshot — click to enlarge

Screenshot 1

✓ Pros

• Extensible plugin ecosystem
• Supports a wide range of programming languages (Java, C/C++, Python, PHP, etc.)
• Customizable with third-party plugins
• Runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux
• Robust features for Java development including incremental compiler, refactoring, and code analysis

✕ Cons

• Can be slow to start and may lag, especially with large projects or many plugins
• Consumes significant memory and CPU, impacting performance on less powerful machines