The Unified IntelliJ IDEA: More Free Features, a Better Experience, Smoother Flow

Julia Shashkova

IntelliJ IDEA is now a unified product!

As we announced back in July, starting from this release (2025.3), there is one IntelliJ IDEA, replacing the separate IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition and IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate to keep things simple and convenient. All the functionality of the Community Edition remains free for non-commercial and commercial use. We’re also adding even more free features, and fallback licensing stays unchanged. For those who want to take their experience further, the extended tooling is accessible in the Ultimate subscription, which comes with a free 30-day trial.

This is more than just a change in distribution – it’s a step forward for our entire community. By unifying IntelliJ IDEA, we can focus our energy on improving the quality of a single product, boosting performance, and driving innovation to deliver the best possible IDE for you. This is about making your journey with IntelliJ IDEA smoother and truly centered on your needs. 

At the same time, we remain fully committed to open-source and will keep IntelliJ IDEA’s codebase on GitHub up to date and accessible for everyone. For details, please refer to this blog post.

As the reasons and changes have been described in detail in the announcement, let’s briefly go through what exactly is changed in 2025.3.

What has changed with the 2025.3 release?

One IntelliJ IDEA – a complete experience

• No need to choose between two editions: You can now access both core and extended features within a single product.
• Free features remain free: Everything you love in the Community Edition continues to be available at no cost and right out of the box. Using IntelliJ IDEA for free does not require any authorizations or activations.
• Even more free features: More features have been added for free, like basic syntax highlighting for Spring, Jakarta EE, and templating engines such as Thymeleaf, a Spring Boot project wizard, database connections creation and configuration, database schemas and objects viewer, full SQL language support, and more! A complete list is available here.
• Flexible trials and upgrades: Free trials for Ultimate subscriptions are available to everyone. After the trial, you can choose to purchase and continue using the Ultimate subscription or continue using IntelliJ IDEA for free with core features for Java and Kotlin development. No need to switch IDE.
• Improved quality: Having a single product lets us focus more on development and testing, delivering the best possible experience for you faster.

How does this change affect you?

• All users get a higher-quality product, as we are consolidating QA resources that were previously spent on two separate editions.
• For existing IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate users, the Ultimate license is transitioning to an Ultimate subscription with full access to extended tooling – no action is required on your side. If your subscription expires, you won’t be locked out of the IDE, meaning that you don’t need to install another version even if your subscription lapses while you are on vacation or between renewals.
• Existing IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition users can continue to use IntelliJ IDEA for free with everything necessary for Java and Kotlin development. They’ll also get to try out the advanced features with a free 30-day trial. Updating from Community Edition 2025.2 and its minor version releases will convert the product into the unified IntelliJ IDEA.
• New IntelliJ IDEA users have a single product to download and can try the IDE’s extended capabilities with a free 30-day trial. They can upgrade to an Ultimate subscription at any time during the trial, or continue using IntelliJ IDEA for free with core Java and Kotlin development once the trial ends.
• With a unified distribution, we’ve simplified the setup for teaching and learning. IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate has always been free for educational use, and we remain dedicated to supporting educators and students by providing continuous access to the full power of IntelliJ IDEA with a free Ultimate subscription. Educational licenses can be requested through this form.
• Those who prefer a fully open-source solution can build an open-source version of IntelliJ IDEA using the source code on GitHub with GitHub Actions. The open-source codebase will be kept up to date with upcoming IntelliJ IDEA releases. This build supports all plugins from JetBrains Marketplace, including paid ones. More details are available here.

Read our extended FAQ for more details.

We believe that by unifying IntelliJ IDEA, we are providing a more powerful, efficient, and user-friendly experience for all developers. This change reflects our ongoing commitment to innovation, quality, and the open-source community.

We’re excited to embark on this new chapter together and look forward to seeing the incredible projects you’ll build with IntelliJ IDEA.

Happy developing!

Subscribe to IntelliJ IDEA Blog updates

Subscribe form

By submitting this form, I agree to the JetBrains Privacy Policy Notification icon

By submitting this form, I agree that JetBrains s.r.o. ("JetBrains") may use my name, email address, and location data to send me newsletters, including commercial communications, and to process my personal data for this purpose. I agree that JetBrains may process said data using third-party services for this purpose in accordance with the JetBrains Privacy Policy. I understand that I can revoke this consent at any time in my profile. In addition, an unsubscribe link is included in each email.

Submit

Thanks, we've got you!