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
Windsurf
Score 0.0 out of 10
N/A
Windsurf (formerly Codeium) is an AI dev tool that is self-hosted for security, with features including rapid code autocomplete, in-editor AI chat assistant, repo natural language search, end-to-end data encryption.
$15
per month 500 credits/mo
Pricing
IntelliJ IDEA
Windsurf
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
Pro
$15
per month 500 credits/mo
Team
$30
per month per user (500 credits/user/mo)
Enterprise
$60
per month per user (up to 200 users & 1,000 credits/user/mo)
Enterprise (more than 200 uses)
Contact Sales
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IntelliJ IDEA
Windsurf
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No 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
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.
If you already have technical knowledge and understanding of coding, Windsurf could be a valuable platform to debug and rewrite code. It was helpful to me to expand coding, since I am not a traditionally programmer. I was able to enhance my base code and functionality much quicker than manually trying.
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.
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.
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.
Windsurf is a good tool for developers with more than basic coding skills. I would recommend it as a tool to quickly mitigate coding errors and issues. I did not take a deeper dive into the integrated extensions, but the library of extensions appear to be solid. An experience developer could quickly launch this platform, scan and test coding, and resolve issues quickly. I did not test this for larger code sets.
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.
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.
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.
Windsurf would be more comparable to GitHub Copilot or Perplexity to me. I think it's more of a pure code debugging line by line than some of the other tools listed above, however, they all have some capabilities to rewrite and test new coding. It boils down to what toolset you are most comfortable with. I typically will work with two platforms with the same issue to see how it is approached and the differences.
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.
