JetBrains has taken the decision to scrap separate installers for its IntelliJ IDEA IDE and combine all versions into one single unified installer, starting with version 2025.3. This single distribution will contain all features, but to access the Ultimate features you’ll still need a subscription.
If you do not have a subscription, the IDE will still be fully functional and will contain more features than the current Community Edition. In fact, the “Community” moniker is effectively being phased out and the IDE will simply be known as IntelliJ IDEA. If you have the Ultimate subscription and it lapses, you won’t be locked out of the IDE, you’ll just be moved to the baseline features.
With this change, current Community Edition users will essentially be getting an upgrade as they’ll get some new features at no cost. There’s no need to install a new version of the IDE, the upgrade will be automatically. Previously Ultimate-only features like enhanced syntax highlighting for popular frameworks (Spring, Jakarta EE, Quarkus, etc), extended project setup wizards, and basic database schema exploration will now be free. While the client is open-source, some of these features remain proprietary but free to access.
Features that will remain available to Ultimate subscribers are advanced framework support, AI-assisted coding, remote development, and full database tools.
With the upcoming 2025.2 update, Jetbrains plans to introduce a “graceful license expiration” experience so that if a subscription ends, the IDE reverts to the free feature set instead of locking the user out.
Regarding fallback licenses, Alexey Stukalov from JetBrains said:
“Your perpetual fallback license still works as before, giving you access to the last major version available at the time your most recent uninterrupted year of subscription began. With the unified distribution, this means you can activate older versions that match your fallback license. Alternatively, you can use the latest version of IntelliJ IDEA with access to its current free feature set.”
This is quite a big change and users may be concerned about JetBrains commitment to remaining open source. The company said that the open source parts of the codebase will remain on GitHub.
The company also said open source builds will be published to GitHub releases but will only include the open-source components, meaning some features in the unified installer, such as Backup and Sync, AI ranking, and localization plugins, will not be available in the open source builds. However, most of them can be installed as free plugins on the JetBrains Marketplace.