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NetBeans vs Oracle SQL Developer comparison

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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 September 2026, in the IDE category, the mindshare of NetBeans is 4.9%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle SQL Developer is 7.1%, up from 4.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IDE Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Oracle SQL Developer7.1%
NetBeans4.9%
Other88.0%
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

"I recommend NetBeans because it is easy to use, open source, free of charge, and has really strong community."
"Use it and you will not regret your decision."
"It comes out of package fully-loaded with a lot of great features for web development."
"Overall, for our company, it has been a good addition, as development times have been shortened using NetBeans."
"C++ 11 support (for a long time)"
"NetBeans Platform can be freely used as a desktop application base, where all the functionality is prepared for me and I make only the business modules."
"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!"
"It has done everything that I needed it to do, and it doesn't cost you anything."
"Oracle SQL Developer is an IDE that also provides a lot of tools for creating ad hoc reports and organizing your objects; those are the main use cases I would say."
"You do not have to install it, just dump it on the OS, then use it."
"Using execution plan, I am able to do lots of query tuning."
"The main benefits of using Oracle SQL Developer include maintaining different connections with environments such as development, quality, and production while ensuring good access control to prevent data mishaps."
"It's an independent platform, you can use it anywhere, it's good, scalable and a lot of times it works as-is, with very few calls to support."
"It’s a great tool for accessing and exploring Oracle Databases."
"It's easy to deploy, I can copy it onto the system and run it without having to install it and this makes it a very good solution for quick use."
 

Cons

"The debugging mechanize could be improved compared to IntelliJ, for example."
"It is a very heavy load on the computer, especially when you compare with Sublime Text Limited plugins and themes."
"The background scanning of projects should be optimized after starting NetBeans."
"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."
"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."
"It's not so stable. Sometimes it crashes, and the connection to the databases is bad."
"There are occasional run time issues."
"It should be more Mac friendly."
"Even though it installs easy, there is a lot of Java behind the tool. It seems like some of the Java is more memory-intensive."
"It would be nice to have the ability to access DBs than Oracle."
"My only complaint over the years has been memory usage, which seems to improve with each release."
"Queries."
"I occasionally have some difficulties with the import of data from other sources, so it sometimes aborts or is not very stable in those areas that still could be improved with Oracle SQL Developer."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I am sad that CLion is not free. Currently, it has no support for Linux makefiles, only cmake, and this is a big mess."
"NetBeans is free and open source."
"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 is basically free."
"It's a free tool."
"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
16%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Insurance Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Comms Service Provider
15%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Marketing Services Firm
10%
 

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

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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: September 2026.
913,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.