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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

"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."
"One of the most important features is that Apache Maven supports it."
"Large scale of projects, templates, and coding support."
"NetBeans has helped us to increase our productivity and defect solving since the IDE is smart."
"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 comes out of package fully-loaded with a lot of great features for web development."
"I use the product, and the many aspects of it, because it covers everything from querying a database to monitoring to making a conceptual model to getting the model from the database and producing diagrams."
"We used to use SQL *Plus, but we needed something with more of a GUI for users who are not technical users."
"Using execution plan, I am able to do lots of query tuning."
"Customer service has been most excellent."
"SQL Developer has reached a maturity level where it offers pretty much the same essential functionality (and much more) that you can find in other solutions, with the benefit of being free."
"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."
"In my work in BI development I find that Oracle SQL Developer is the main tool in my tool box."
"Customer Service: Good. Technical Support: Good."
 

Cons

"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 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."
"t is a very heavy load on the computer, especially when you compare with Sublime Text Limited plugins and themes."
"One of main areas that the tool can improve is performance."
"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."
"While working with Data Pump, I have faced a few problems."
"There are occasional runtime issues that are easily worked around, especially on a Windows deployment."
"Although the GUI is nice, it could still use improvement, a better user interface."
"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."
"I find Oracle SQL Developer less interactive and less developer-friendly, particularly when it comes to debugging, which was easier in TOAD."
"It's not so stable. Sometimes it crashes, and the connection to the databases is bad."
"It would be nice to have the ability to access DBs than Oracle."
"But after many years, when I tried to use it again, against the more advanced Oracle Database, it did not work."
 

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."
"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."
"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
13%
Insurance Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Wholesaler/Distributor
7%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Marketing Services Firm
14%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Energy/Utilities Company
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.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.