NetBeans vs IntelliJ IDEA

NetBeans is a free, GPL-licensed IDE. It can run on any computer with a Java virtual machine. If a computer has a Java virtual machine (JVM), Netbeans can run on it. Netbeans can, therefore, run on a variety of operating systems such as Windows, *nix, and Mac OS. Being open source means that developers can contribute changes to the code to have the IDE better serve them.

Has built-in support for the most popular revision control systems

Supports synchronization with projects stored remotely through FTP or SFTP.

You can run Linux terminal inside the IDE.

Supports Symfony1, Symfony2,Yii2 & Zend frameworks.

There's a built-in local history that lets you compare code changes and revert to a specific revision. Helpful when source code file accidentally overwritten.

PHPUnit is a testing framework. You can create test classes, run and see the code coverage directly from IDE interface.

Git commits/local diff comparison is best

NetBeans can be extended beyond the basic tool that you get out of the box through community made custom plugins.

The most used composer commands can be done directly from IDE.

Netbeans not only debugs your code, and points out errors but also gives you hints on which sections of your code could be further optimized.

Supports Smarty Template Engine right out of the box.

NetBeans provides code completion and documentation for all Twig elements.

Supports documentation generation through ApiGen and PHPDoc.

Supports static code analysis with phpstan

ApiGen allows automatically generating documentation from specifically formatted comments. It's easy to use, supports traits, allows fuzzy searching for classes and highlighting docblocks using Markdown.

IDEA places an emphasis in safe refactoring, offering a variety of features to make this possible for a variety of languages.
These features include safe delete, type migration and replacing method code duplicates.

Uses a fast indexing technique to provide contextual hints (auto-completion, available object members, import suggestions).
On-the-fly code analysis to detect errors and propose refactorization.

A very complete development environment support.

IntelliJ supports many languages besides Java, some of these are: golang, Scala, Clojure, Groovy, Bash, etc.

Many plugins are available for almost any task a developer may need to cover. Plugins are developed by Jetbrains themselves or by 3rd parties through the SDK available for writing them.

IntelliJ IDEA hardly ever crashes or has any issues that plague other Java IDEs like file corruption or slowness.

IDEA has a clean, intuitive interface with some customization available (such as the Darcula theme).

The documentation is exhaustive, easy to navigate, and clearly worded.

With ability to step into a certain part of a large method invocation (Shift+F7), drop frame, executing code snippets, showing method return values, etc.

There is a free community edition (open source) and an ultimate edition, which you can compare here.

The ultimate edition is available for free for one year for students but must be registered through an .edu e-mail account.

These simplify the daily work, e.g. copy/cut a whole line without the need to select it.

Verify yourselves as a student to get more perks.

Creating an embedded database, running SQL script in a dedicated terminal, viewing tables and their contents, and creating a connection to an in-memory or embedded database is fully supported.

I pay $24 a month and i have access to all jetbrain peoducts , so i use their many tools , i tried many others like netbeans , eclipse , etc , they re good but intelij is on the space and the sky is the limit . Been using it for 5 years and i cant tell i got frustrated using .it