Eclipse PHP Development Tools vs IntelliJ IDEA

Eclipse PHP Development Tools (PDT) provides a PHP IDE framework for Eclipse, for developing PHP web applications and extending PHP capabilities through the Web Tools Project. Its editing tools include syntax highlighting and validation, content assistance, navigation, formatting, refactoring, and code templates. PDT lists debugging and profiling with Zend Debugger or Xdebug, PHPUnit support, and remote projects. The PHP Developers package is described as a starting point for PHP developers and includes PHP language support, a Git client, XML Editor, Mylyn, and Terminal. Downloads are available for macOS, Windows, and Linux in 64-bit and ARM 64-bit builds; Java must be installed. PDT can also be installed into an existing Eclipse workspace. Listed extensions include Symfony, Twig, YAML, Smarty, Emmet, and CS-Fixer. The project page lists version 8.4, dated 2025-12-10, as its latest release and labels the project Mature. PDT is free, and its site points users to a manual, forum, wiki, mailing list, and bug-submission link.

IntelliJ IDEA is an IDE for professional Java and Kotlin development, available on Windows, macOS, and Linux. It offers context-aware completion, static analysis, and automated refactoring. The JVM debugger includes breakpoints, variable inspection, expression evaluation, and step-by-step execution. Gradle and Maven integrations cover building, packaging, testing, and deployment, while version-control support includes Git, Mercurial, Perforce, and Subversion. Users can process GitHub pull requests in the IDE, and plugins from JetBrains Marketplace add support for other languages, frameworks, and technologies. Core Java and Kotlin functionality remains free after the included 30-day Ultimate trial ends. The Ultimate subscription adds advanced tools and integrations and costs $100.00 for the first year, $199.00 for the second year, and $159.00 per year from the third year onward. Listed minimum hardware is a 4-core x86_64 or arm64 CPU, 8 GB total RAM, and 10 GB of disk space. Users can choose in IDE settings whether to share anonymous usage data.