No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

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 July 2026, in the IDE category, the mindshare of NetBeans is 4.9%, up from 4.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle SQL Developer is 6.4%, up from 4.4% 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

"Overall, for our company, it has been a good addition, as development times have been shortened using NetBeans."
"Server Support"
"Use it and you will not regret your decision."
"Go for it! You’ll never look back!"
"One of the most important features is that Apache Maven supports it."
"Large scale of projects, templates, and coding support."
"I recommend NetBeans because it is easy to use, open source, free of charge, and has really strong community."
"Setup is very simple and short, and integrating existing code and projects is also very simple."
"Ability to analyze performance, using Explain Plan statement."
"You can install it on every platform. It just works. The other thing is that it's free. And Oracle is committed to the development of the tool, so it has been improving."
"The solution I've created is revenue forecasting and our organization goes to Wall Street with the earnings call, with the forecast."
"Everybody should try it because you do not have to code things to create output from JSON or DDL."
"Maintaining databases is the most valuable feature in Oracle SQL Developer; it's also easy to use, fast, and intuitive."
"License is free, setup is simple and scriptable."
"I have a lot of flexibility with it."
"Working with Oracle SQL Developer is similar to being a detective because I have some clues about something, and then I need to go deep."
 

Cons

"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."
"One of main areas that the tool can improve is performance."
"The debugging mechanize could be improved compared to IntelliJ, for example."
"The background scanning of projects should be optimized after starting 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."
"It is a very heavy load on the computer, especially when you compare with Sublime Text Limited plugins and themes."
"There are always rooms for improvement for any product."
"There are occasional runtime issues that are easily worked around, especially on a Windows deployment."
"The stability depends on what version you're using. There are more successful versions and are less successful versions. For example, 17.3 is less successful. There were many bugs. Now, we are trying to pull all the developers to upgrade to 17.4."
"If you're trying to return exceedingly large data sets into the tool for some reason to download, that could be a challenge, depending on the memory on your machine and the disk space you have to output it to."
"I find Oracle SQL Developer less interactive and less developer-friendly, particularly when it comes to debugging, which was easier in TOAD."
"My only complaint over the years has been memory usage, which seems to improve with each release."
"The initial setup is always a problem, it cannot find the Java SDK."
"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 is room for improvement in the Real Time SQL Monitoring."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 is an open source and free tool, with no changes, and the licensing allows me even to change source code, if I need."
"It's a free tool."
"It's a no-cost license and it offers outstanding functionality on that basis."
"It is basically free."
"It has the advantage that it's free. The next best competitor would cost several thousand dollars."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which IDE solutions are best for your needs.
904,899 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
15%
Insurance Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Educational Organization
6%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Marketing Services Firm
12%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Outsourcing 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
Earn 20 points
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: June 2026.
904,899 professionals have used our research since 2012.