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Eclipse logo

Eclipse

The Eclipse Foundation - home to a global community

As of 30 August 2026, Eclipse is free to use. Eclipse IDE is a leading open platform for professional developers. Softwr lists it under Technology. Eclipse is made by Eclipse Foundation, launched in 2001, available on Windows, macOS, Linux.

Overview

What Eclipse does

Eclipse IDE is a leading open platform for professional developers. It provides comprehensive facilities for software development including a workspace, extensible plug-in system, and rich client platform for developing applications.

What people use it for

  • Java application development
  • Enterprise software development
  • Web application development
  • Plugin development
  • Educational programming

The honest half

Where it falls short

Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Eclipse.

  • High memory consumption and CPU usage, especially with multiple plugins installed
  • Slow startup times and performance degradation with large projects or many open editors
  • Requires configuration of eclipse.ini file to optimize heap sizes for adequate performance
  • User interface considered outdated compared to modern IDE alternatives
  • User base fell from 39% of Java developers in 2024 to 28% in 2025, indicating market decline

Cross-shopped

What people choose instead of Eclipse

Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.

  • Eclipse logo
    Eclipse
    vs
    JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA logo
    JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA

    JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA: Commercial IDE by JetBrains with superior performance optimization, powerful Java development tools, and responsive user interface compared to Eclipse.

  • Eclipse logo
    Eclipse
    vs
    Docker logo
    Docker

    Docker: Containerization platform providing development and deployment tools that work alongside or replace traditional IDEs for modern application development.

  • Eclipse logo
    Eclipse
    vs
    GitHub logo
    GitHub

    GitHub: Platform providing development tools and collaboration features that complement or replace Eclipse for modern software development workflows.

Capabilities

Features

  • Java development environment

  • Extensible plugin architecture

  • Integrated debugger

  • Code refactoring

  • Version control integration

  • Build automation

  • Multi-language support

  • Rich client platform

  • Git

    Integration with Git

  • SVN

    Integration with SVN

  • Maven

    Integration with Maven

  • Gradle

    Integration with Gradle

Answered, with sources

Questions people ask

Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.

How much does Eclipse IDE cost?

Eclipse IDE is completely free and open-source, released under the Eclipse Public License 2.0.

Source

Behind it

Who makes Eclipse

Company
Eclipse Foundation
Based in
Ottawa, Canada
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Where to go from Eclipse

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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Eclipse, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.

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