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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 June 2026, in the IDE category, the mindshare of NetBeans is 4.8%, up from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle SQL Developer is 6.4%, up from 4.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IDE Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Oracle SQL Developer6.4%
NetBeans4.8%
Other88.8%
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."
"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!"
"One of the most important features is that Apache Maven supports it."
"Use it and you will not regret your decision."
"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."
"Server Support"
"Large scale of projects, templates, and coding support."
"It allows us to implement a form of test driven development (TDD) for database-resident code."
"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."
"The solution I've created is revenue forecasting and our organization goes to Wall Street with the earnings call, with the forecast."
"The most valuable features of Oracle SQL Developer that I use. However, I do not use all of them"
"You do not have to install it, just dump it on the OS, then use it."
"Very, very impressed with the development and product management team for this particular tool."
"IT staff supporting the SIS could not do our jobs without SQL Developer."
"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."
 

Cons

"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 background scanning of projects should be optimized after starting NetBeans."
"Debugging: Watches, Evaluate Expression, and data inspection are limited."
"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."
"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."
"One of main areas that the tool can improve is performance."
"The debugging mechanize could be improved compared to IntelliJ, for example."
"The competing products have more features."
"There are occasional run time issues."
"The GUI ‘navigator’ screen uses different icons for partitioned, indexed organised tables, temporary and of course conventional tables, but this is not the case with indexes in the viewer - they all look the same so you can’t tell if it is a bitmap index, a unique index, a partitioned index or what."
"I think it would be great to have an overview over the sessions it opens so that we could easily see and control which connections to the database we want to keep open, which ones are hanging; and it would be great to make them independent from each other."
"It should be more Mac friendly."
"But after many years, when I tried to use it again, against the more advanced Oracle Database, it did not work."
"Could be made to load faster."
"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."
 

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

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
15%
Insurance Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Educational Organization
6%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Marketing Services Firm
13%
Healthcare Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
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

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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: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.