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NetBeans vs Oracle SQL Developer comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

NetBeans
Ranking in IDE
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Oracle SQL Developer
Ranking in IDE
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the IDE category, the mindshare of NetBeans is 4.9%, up from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle SQL Developer is 6.4%, up from 4.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IDE Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Oracle SQL Developer6.4%
NetBeans4.9%
Other88.7%
IDE
 

Featured Reviews

DB
Java Developer at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
Some of the valuable features are Java development, RCP ​support and support for various other languages.
* Java development support. (The Java editor is one of the best Java IMHO editors. Java projects support Ant and Maven.) * RCP support * GUI editor for Java windows * RCP support: An easy way to create your own app using NetBeans base. There is a lot of documentation for RCP creation. * Plugins can be easy created. Also there is support for other languages as C/C++, HTLM5, Javascript, Groovy, PHP... There is a lot of plugins that can be easily installed.
Vikram_Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Architect at Ontario Power Generation
Has improved development efficiency through reusable components and intuitive programming features
When errors occur while programming, they are very generic. Even when searching the internet, the errors remain generic and it takes considerable time to understand the fix. This was predominantly felt because we were mostly working on writing code and developing features. Error handling needs to be improved. The patches and upgrade process is very long. In the last year and a half, I haven't upgraded, so we don't know if latest features have arrived. Another issue is with sessions. If we were working on code and then switch off our laptop for two to three days, the session would keep running. This consumes many resources and flags to the team that a user has been continuously using Oracle SQL Developer. There should be a timeout period for inactive sessions.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"C++ 11 support (for a long time)"
"I recommend NetBeans because it is easy to use, open source, free of charge, and has really strong community."
"It comes out of package fully-loaded with a lot of great features for web development."
"When you have to develop in Java, this IDE is ideal because it has many plugins that make your life easier... For example, when working with Hibernate or with JPA, creating entities is very easy through a graphical interface."
"It is easy to deploy, manage servers, and ORMS resources."
"One of the most important features is that Apache Maven supports it."
"The learning curve is easy and fast because the interface is simple and intuitive, enabling us to easily train developers who are not expert in metrics."
"Go for it! You’ll never look back!"
"Using execution plan, I am able to do lots of query tuning."
"Included Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler; no PL/SQL IDE has such modelling capabilities, as far as I know, and this is a killer feature for me."
"I would definitely advise others to look into this tool and its solution."
"The solution I've created is revenue forecasting and our organization goes to Wall Street with the earnings call, with the forecast."
"When I measure the amount of time for the same query to run on three different tools, Oracle SQL Developer leads the charts, and on average, if it takes around ten minutes on SQL Server, it takes roughly five to six minutes on Oracle SQL Developer, saving us nearly half an hour to one hour a day."
"Technical support is excellent."
"Since Oracle SQL Developer is free, we no longer incurred the cost of the previous tool."
"I assess the benefits of Oracle SQL Developer's reporting framework for data-driven decision making by stating that Oracle is the most efficient database for relational databases in my opinion."
 

Cons

"Background scanning of sources on demand, disallowed by Options (processor usage, build cannot be deleted by the old version build)."
"It is a very heavy load on the computer, especially when you compare with Sublime Text Limited plugins and themes."
"Background scanning of sources on demand, disallowed by Options (processor usage, build cannot be deleted by the old version build)."
"Debugging: Watches, Evaluate Expression, and data inspection are limited."
"I would like there to be better integration with Git, as there are IDEs such as Eclipse that offer this integration in a much more elegant way than NetBeans."
"There are always rooms for improvement for any product. The good thing with NetBeans is that since it is Open Source, you can just go ahead and contribute whatever you want to change yourself."
"The background scanning of projects should be optimized after starting NetBeans."
"The debugging mechanize could be improved compared to IntelliJ, for example."
"There are occasional run time issues."
"Although the GUI is nice, it could still use improvement, a better user interface."
"It's not so stable. Sometimes it crashes, and the connection to the databases is bad."
"Queries."
"I find Oracle SQL Developer less interactive and less developer-friendly, particularly when it comes to debugging, which was easier in TOAD."
"As our company keeps on growing, our data also keeps on growing. Currently, we are a $12-billion company and this tool supports us; our projection in the future is to grow from $12 billion to $20 billion in the next three years and I am not sure whether it might help then or not, as our data will also grow consequently."
"There are occasional runtime issues that are easily worked around, especially on a Windows deployment."
"Versioning is there, check. But it sucks a lot, double check."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an open source and free tool, with no changes, and the licensing allows me even to change source code, if I need."
"NetBeans is free and open source."
"I am sad that CLion is not free. Currently, it has no support for Linux makefiles, only cmake, and this is a big mess."
"It's a free tool."
"It is basically free."
"It's a no-cost license and it offers outstanding functionality on that basis."
"It has the advantage that it's free. The next best competitor would cost several thousand dollars."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
13%
Insurance Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Wholesaler/Distributor
6%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Marketing Services Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise20
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle SQL Developer?
The pricing of Oracle SQL Developer depends on the size of the company and the project. I cannot use Oracle or other solutions if I am just starting. If I start with MySQL, it depends on the size o...
What needs improvement with Oracle SQL Developer?
I want to address performance issues with large amounts of data. When I run queries that return lakhs or millions of rows, Oracle SQL Developer sometimes freezes, takes time to load, or even crashe...
What is your primary use case for Oracle SQL Developer?
In my current project at Cognizant, Oracle SQL Developer is one of the targets to load the data after extracting and transforming it, so this is our use case for my project. For example, I was at a...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Weyco Group Inc.
Prinova
Find out what your peers are saying about NetBeans vs. Oracle SQL Developer and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
895,151 professionals have used our research since 2012.