Here’s the Deal

Eclipse vs IntelliJ IDEA

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When comparing Eclipse vs IntelliJ IDEA, the Slant community recommends IntelliJ IDEA for most people. In the question“What are the best IDEs?” IntelliJ IDEA is ranked 2nd while Eclipse is ranked 12th.

Specs

Cross Platformyes

Auto Completeyes

Bracket Matchingyes

Code Templatesyes

Extension languageyes

Gityes

Integrated Debuggeryes

LicenseMIT

Multi Language Supportyes

PlatformsCross Platform

Pluginyes

Plugin Manageryes

PriceFREE

Snippetsyes

Source Control Integrationyes

Supported remote file editing protocolsyes

Terminalyes

Unit Testingyes

Cross PlatformYes

Supported platformsWindows, macOS, Linux

Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking

Common Questions

What are the best IDEs?

Pros

Pro
Large selection of plugins

Eclipse has a large and active community, which has resulted in a wide variety of plugins.

Pro
Fast compiler

Eclipse uses a custom compiler (which can also be used outside of Eclipse), which is often faster than the normal Java Compiler, especially for incremental compilation.

Pro
Free and open source

Eclipse is an open source project and free to use.

Pro
Highly customizable

Thanks to the large variety of plugins and various configuration options, Eclipse is very customizable.

Pro
Multiple languages - one IDE

Pro
Good refactoring tools

Pro
Great debugger

Shows threads, concurrency locks, and conditional breakpoints.

Pro
Good font rendering

Because Eclipse is based on SWT, it uses the native font rendering and thus looks better than other IDEs on some Linux systems, where the Java font rendering is not optimal.

Pro
Gives good perspectives on your project

The concept of perspectives is outstanding. It puts right tools at your fingertips, keeping the tools you currently don't need out from the workbench. For example, in VCS perspective it's all about versions and branches. In debug perspective it's all about state.
In java ee project it can show http endpoints in a very accessible manner.

Pro
Faster than any other Java IDE

Fast, suitable for big projects, customizable, supports UML, many programming languages, plugins, and widgets vs NetBeans and JDeveloper. Support for Workspaces and Perspectives. Long term tested, free of charge, vs IntelliJ IDEA.

Pro
Dark theme improved!

Pro
Great Java Support

Pro
Great JavaScript support

Pro
A good editor for test-driven development

IntelliJ IDEA is really easy to work with when it comes to test-driven development in Java and JavaScript/TypeScript.

Pro
Markdown support with preview

Pro
Good BASH script support

Pro
Great TypeScript support

Really good support for importing classes, libraries, etc. into a typescript class. Making it easy to do TDD.

Pro
Supports PHP quite well

Pro
Angular CLI support

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Cons

Con
UI can be confusing

There's an overly abundant presence of menus, this forces you to constantly click around the different menu structures; foreign ideas, like Views and Perspectives; strange menu choices, like configure settings located in Windows menu->Preferences.

Con
Plugins can be unstable

Though there are plenty of plugins to choose from, they aren't always reliable. Some aren't maintained, bug fixes can be slow, and you may need to download plugins from multiple sources.

Con
Lack of plugins with good user interfaces

Many Eclipse plugins are extremely confusing, with UIs that are even less consistent than Eclipse itself.

Con
Tends to be slow and lags a lot

Con
Poor language support via plugins

Eclipse supports other languages with a huge amount of plugins. Many languages have their own distribution, but multi-language is hard to exist in one project. Like Scala, there is no official support from Eclipse for this language. If Eclipse gets an update, languages such as these will not.