JetBrains has announced two of its popular integrated development environments (IDEs), WebStorm and Rider, will be free for non-commercial use.
The licensing change is designed to support users, hobbyists and learners who work on personal projects, contribute to open source work and create other content, by giving them the resources free of charge.
Commercial use of WebStorm and Rider will remain unchanged, and paid-for subscriptions will still be required for business users.
WebStorm and Rider go free for personal use
JetBrains cited accessibility as a key driver for its decision to make the IDEs free to access for certain purposes. Enabling free access to full-featured IDEs for non-commercial use is hoped to foster learning and skill-building among developers.
The announcement references Stack Overflow data to highlight that more than two in three (68%) developers code outside of work for fun, thus having free access to WebStorm or Rider is hoped to support the community.
Offering Rider and WebStorm for free also provides a new option for macOS users impacted by Microsoft’s decision to retire Visual Studio on Apple hardware in August 2023.
The tradeoff, though, is that users must agree to the collection of anonymized usage statistics if they want to access JetBrains’ IDEs for free. The company assures users that this data is limited to feature usage metrics, but there is no option to opt out.
Enabling free access is as easy as selecting non-commercial use during the startup process. The license is valid for one year, but it automatically renews providing the IDE has been used within the previous six months.
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