IntelliJ IDEA (pronounced in-TEL-ih-jay "idea") is an integrated development environment (IDE) written in Java for developing computer software written in Java, Kotlin, Groovy, and other JVM-based languages. It is developed by JetBrains (formerly known as IntelliJ) and is available as an Apache 2 Licensed community edition with proprietary license for some bundled plugins, and in a proprietary commercial edition. Both can be used for commercial development.
Contents
History
The first version of IntelliJ IDEA was released in January 2001 and was one of the first available Java IDEs with advanced code navigation and code refactoring capabilities integrated.
In 2009, JetBrains released the source code for IntelliJ IDEA under the open-source Apache License 2.0. JetBrains also began distributing a limited version of IntelliJ IDEA consisting of open-source features under the moniker Community Edition. The commercial Ultimate Edition provides additional features and remains available for a fee.
In a 2010 InfoWorld report, IntelliJ received the highest test centre score out of the four top Java programming tools: Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA, NetBeans and JDeveloper.
In December 2014, Google announced version 1.0 of Android Studio, an open-source IDE for Android apps, based on the open source community edition. Other development environments based on IntelliJ's framework include AppCode, CLion, DataGrip, GoLand, PhpStorm, PyCharm, Rider, RubyMine, WebStorm, and MPS.
In September 2020, Huawei announced and released version 1.0 of DevEco Studio, an open-source IDE for HarmonyOS apps development, based on Jetbrains IntelliJ IDEA with Huawei's SmartAssist for Windows and macOS.
In September 2025, JetBrains added AI support to its IDE as a free (limited use) or a paid-for subscription service. This includes their own agent (Junie) and supporting Anthropic's Claude; other agents were already available as plug-ins.
Features
Coding assistance
The IDE provides certain features like code completion by analysing the context, code navigation which allows jumping to a class or declaration in the code directly, code refactoring, code debugging, linting and options to fix inconsistencies via suggestions.
Built in tools and integration
The IDE provides integration with build/packaging tools like Maven, Grunt, Gradle, and sbt. It supports databases like Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQLite, and MySQL can be accessed directly from the IDE in the Ultimate edition, through an embedded version of DataGrip, another IDE developed by JetBrains.
Plugin ecosystem
IntelliJ IDEA supports plugins through which one can add additional functionality to the IDE. Plugins can be downloaded and installed either from IntelliJ's plugin repository website or through the IDE's built-in plugin search and install feature. Each edition has separate plugin repositories, with the Community edition supporting over 7,600 plugins, and the Ultimate edition supporting over 8,300 plugins, as of November 2024.
Supported languages
The Community and Ultimate editions differ in their support for various programming languages as shown in the following table.
Technologies and frameworks
Source:
There was a free plugin from Atlassian for IntelliJ available to integrate with JIRA, Bamboo, Crucible and FishEye. However, the software, called IDE-Connector, was discontinued on June 1, 2015.
Software versioning and revision control
The two editions also differ in their support for software versioning and revision control systems.
Related products
The core engine (IntelliJ IDEA) is also included in a number of product IDEs specifically targeted at particular development environments. As of late September 2025, these included:
IntelliJ IDEA: Java, Kotlin, Spring
PyCharm: Python, Django, Jupyter
PhpStorm: PHP, Laravel, Symfony
GoLand: Go (Golang), JavaScript, TypeScript
Rider: C#, .NET, ASP.NET
CLion: C, C++, CMake
RustRover: Rust, SQL, JavaScript
WebStorm: JavaScript, TypeScript, React
RubyMine: Ruby on Rails (RoR), Hotwire, RuboCop
DataGrip: Databases, SQL, NoSQL
DataSpell: Python, Jupyter, SQL cells
ReSharper: C#, .NET, ASP.NET