IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate Features Summary | Generated by AI
Question: What does IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate provide?
Answer:
IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate is the paid subscription tier (often just called “Ultimate”) of JetBrains’ flagship IDE. As of 2026 (following the 2025.3 unification release), there is only one IntelliJ IDEA product with a single installer — the core functionality is free forever (even more generous than the old Community Edition), while Ultimate subscription unlocks a large set of professional / advanced features on top of that base.
Main things that IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate subscription provides (beyond the free version)
- Full-featured web & frontend development
- Excellent JavaScript, TypeScript, HTML, CSS, Sass/SCSS, Less support
- Built-in tools for React, Angular, Vue, Node.js, npm/yarn/pnpm, Webpack, Vite, etc.
- Advanced refactoring, debugging, and completion for frontend code
- Enterprise Java / backend frameworks (most popular reason to buy)
- Deep Spring / Spring Boot / Spring MVC support (wizards, navigation, refactoring, dependency injection insight, endpoints tool window, etc.)
- Jakarta EE, Java EE, MicroProfile
- Advanced support for Hibernate/JPA, Micronaut, Quarkus, etc.
- Database tools & SQL
- Full database explorer, schema navigation
- SQL editor with autocompletion, schema-aware queries
- Ability to run queries, view data, generate DDL, manage connections
- HTTP Client (very popular feature)
- Powerful built-in REST/GraphQL/HTTP client with environment variables, scripting, response history, etc.
- Profiler & performance tools
- Advanced CPU/memory/allocations profiling
- Async profiler integration
- Build tools & deployment
- Better / deeper integration with Docker, Kubernetes, Cloud (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud), remote interpreters, etc.
- Additional language & technology support
- Much better support for Python, Ruby, PHP, Go (compared to free version)
- Many Ultimate-only or significantly better plugins
- Advanced debugging & testing
- Spring Debugger enhancements
- Better test runners & coverage for complex enterprise scenarios
In short:
If you mainly write plain Java / Kotlin / Android code without heavy framework usage → the free version is usually enough (and it’s excellent).
If you work with Spring Boot, full-stack web apps, databases, frontend frameworks, REST APIs, or enterprise Java → Ultimate subscription usually saves significant time and provides a much smoother experience.
Many developers describe it as “paying for the ecosystem integrations and productivity multipliers” rather than just the editor itself.
References:
- https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/features
- https://www.jetbrains.com/products/compare (comparison matrix)
- https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2025/12/intellij-idea-unified-release (unification announcement)
- https://www.jetbrains.com/idea