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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 April 2026, in the IDE category, the mindshare of NetBeans is 4.6%, up from 4.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle SQL Developer is 6.0%, up from 3.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IDE Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Oracle SQL Developer6.0%
NetBeans4.6%
Other89.4%
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

"Setup is very simple and short, and integrating existing code and projects is also very simple."
"Overall, for our company, it has been a good addition, as development times have been shortened using NetBeans."
"Go for it! You’ll never look back!"
"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."
"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."
"It is easy to deploy, manage servers, and ORMS resources."
"C++ 11 support (for a long time)"
"Using execution plan, I am able to do lots of query tuning."
"I like it because it's very similar in output to SQL *Plus, and it has many convenience features that make it easier to read the data and use the basic reporting features it provides."
"The main benefit of SQL Developer is that it is free."
"Very, very impressed with the development and product management team for this particular tool."
"When we migrated to Oracle SQL Developer, we found it very user friendly and easy to work with."
"It allows us to implement a form of test driven development (TDD) for database-resident code."
"We used to use SQL *Plus, but we needed something with more of a GUI for users who are not technical users."
"Everybody should try it because you do not have to code things to create output from JSON or DDL."
 

Cons

"One of main areas that the tool can improve is performance."
"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. 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."
"Debugging: Watches, Evaluate Expression, and data inspection are limited."
"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."
"They were not supportive. I didn't get a solution."
"But after many years, when I tried to use it again, against the more advanced Oracle Database, it did not work."
"It's more stable sometimes and less stable other times. I have used it in Windows, Mac, and Linux. It's variable, it's not the same stability. I think that can be improved on."
"There are occasional runtime issues that are easily worked around, especially on a Windows deployment."
"Queries."
"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."
"I would like to see it support NoSQL database."
"Scalability has room for improvement. Often if you have to do a heavy load of queries or are getting large result sets you have to be careful not to overload the Java virtual machine that's running."
 

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's a free tool."
"It has the advantage that it's free. The next best competitor would cost several thousand dollars."
"It is basically free."
"It's a no-cost license and it offers outstanding functionality on that basis."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
13%
Insurance Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Wholesaler/Distributor
7%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Marketing Services Firm
14%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Educational Organization
5%
 

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: April 2026.
891,869 professionals have used our research since 2012.