JetBrains AI Assistant is the AI layer built into IntelliJ, PyCharm, WebStorm and the rest of the JetBrains family, including the Junie autonomous agent. Pricing is credit-metered: AI Free gives 3 credits per 30 days, AI Pro is $10 a month with 10 credits, AI Ultimate is $30 with 35. Two things decide what you actually pay. If you hold an All Products Pack or dotUltimate licence, AI Pro is already included — check before subscribing. And running Junie CLI with your own API key bills your provider directly, bypassing JetBrains credits entirely.
Reviewed by EdGrows·Updated Aug 18, 2026Affiliate link — we may earn a commission
This analysis is based on documentation, public user reports, and vendor materials — not yet on our own hands-on testing. How we rate
Before comparing tiers, check what you already own.
AI Pro is included with the All Products Pack and with dotUltimate. A large share of professional JetBrains users — anyone on a company-bought all-IDE licence — is already entitled to it. Subscribing separately costs $120 a year for something sitting inactive in the account you're logged into.
Then check the second exit: Junie CLI in bring-your-own-key mode bills your model provider directly, bypassing JetBrains credits altogether. Local models through Ollama, LM Studio or llama.cpp work the same way. Effective JetBrains AI spend on that path is zero beyond the IDE licence.
Neither of these is hidden exactly, but neither leads the pricing page. Between them they cover a substantial share of the people who'd otherwise be reaching for AI Ultimate.
| Tier | Price | Credits/30 days |
|---|---|---|
| AI Free | $0 | 3 |
| AI Pro | $10/user/mo (~$8.33 annual) | 10 |
| AI Pro Business | $20/user/mo | 10 |
| AI Ultimate | $30/user/mo (~$25 annual) | 35 |
| AI Ultimate Business | $60/user/mo | 35 |
| AI Enterprise | ~$60/user/mo, annual | Custom |
A credit corresponds to roughly a dollar of cloud compute. Published guidance puts one credit at about ten chat code-generation requests, forty in-editor generations, or a few hundred documentation lookups — which means the number attached to your plan is far less informative than which model you point at.
Two things the table doesn't show.
AI Free is a permanent autocomplete, not a trial. Three credits evaporate in a couple of Junie runs, and the free tier excludes Community Editions, Android Studio and frontier models. If you want to evaluate the actual product, take the 30-day AI Pro trial with its extended quota instead.
European buyers pay more than the sticker. JetBrains adds VAT by country unless you provide a VAT ID — around 20% across much of the EU, so a $10 seat is closer to $12.
Junie is the autonomous agent and the reason most people upgrade. Describe a task — migrate every API call to the new SDK — and it explores the project, edits file by file, runs the tests, and returns when it hits something ambiguous.
Structurally this is the same idea as agent mode in GitHub Copilot or a session with Devin. The difference is what it stands on.
JetBrains IDEs already maintain a deep semantic index of your project — that's the machinery behind refactoring tools that have been the category benchmark for fifteen years. The AI reads from that index rather than reconstructing understanding from raw text. For JVM code especially, where type information is rich and IntelliJ's model of it is unusually complete, this produces suggestions that fit the codebase rather than merely resembling it.
That's a genuine architectural advantage, and it's the thing an extension in someone else's editor structurally cannot replicate. It's also why the comparison against Copilot inside JetBrains isn't a straight capability question — Copilot works fine there, it just doesn't have the index.
Metered billing on top of a per-seat IDE subscription is an awkward shape, and it's the complaint that shows up most consistently in 2026 reviews.
The bill moves with model choice, not with effort. Two developers doing similar work can land in different places depending on which model they selected in a dropdown, which is not intuitive.
Heavy agent use exits the plan quickly. Thirty-five credits on Ultimate sounds generous until Junie is running several times a day. Top-ups exist at $1 each with twelve-month validity, but "buy more credits" is a worse conversation with finance than "raise the seat count."
It stacks on an existing cost. You're already paying for the IDE. Copilot at $10 with unmetered completion is a single line item; JetBrains AI is a second one on top of a licence you renew annually.
The honest counterweight: unlimited local completion on every tier including free means the everyday experience — AI finishing your lines — never touches credits at all. The metered part is the part that's genuinely expensive to run.
JVM developers. Java and Kotlin teams get the most out of the semantic index, and IntelliJ is already where they work. This is the clearest case.
Python developers in PyCharm, for the same reason, with the caveat that Python's dynamism gives the index less to work with.
Polyglot shops standardised on JetBrains. If the whole team is in GoLand, RubyMine, PhpStorm and Rider, one AI layer across all of them is operationally simpler than per-editor tools.
Anyone on the All Products Pack, because the marginal cost is zero and it's already there.
Weaker fits: teams split across VS Code and JetBrains (you'll buy twice), developers who mostly want unmetered completion and nothing else (Copilot is simpler and cheaper), heavy daily agent users on a fixed budget (credits will annoy you — go BYOK), and anyone on Community Edition or Android Studio, which the free tier excludes.
Against GitHub Copilot: Copilot is $10 with unmetered completions, works across VS Code, JetBrains, Visual Studio and Neovim, and reached agent-mode general availability on JetBrains in March 2026. JetBrains AI is $10 with 10 credits and deeper IDE understanding. Choose predictability and portability, or choose integration depth — for mixed-editor teams Copilot usually wins on operational grounds alone.
Against Cursor: Cursor is $20, has the largest install base in the category, and asks you to leave your IDE for a VS Code fork. For developers who'd sooner change jobs than change editors, that ends the conversation. For everyone else, Cursor's agent workflows are more mature and its billing is flat.
Against Aider: Aider is free and terminal-based with any model you like, and it composes rather than competes — plenty of JetBrains users run the IDE for editing and Aider for delegated multi-file changes, paying only for tokens. If credits are your objection, this is the cheapest way around them.
Against Cline: Cline is open-source and BYOK, but VS Code-centric, so JetBrains users don't get a like-for-like option. Worth knowing about mainly as the reference point for what unmetered BYOK looks like.
Against Tabnine: Tabnine is the answer when code cannot leave your infrastructure at all, with air-gapped deployment JetBrains doesn't match — at $39 per user annually and enterprise-only. JetBrains AI's local model support covers milder privacy requirements at a fraction of that.
| Plan | Monthly | Annual equivalent | Credits | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI Free | $0 | — | 3/30 days | Unlimited local completion, evaluating |
| AI Pro | $10 | ~$8.33 | 10 | Most individual JetBrains developers |
| AI Ultimate | $30 | ~$25 | 35 | Heavy daily Junie and frontier-model use |
| AI Pro Business | $20 | — | 10 | Team seats with admin controls |
| AI Ultimate Business | $60 | — | 35 | Teams running agents at volume |
| AI Enterprise | ~$60 | annual only | Custom | Larger orgs, governance, custom quotas |
Checked August 2026 against JetBrains' published plans and current third-party pricing analyses. Sources disagree on how AI Pro's allowance is described — some 2026 write-ups characterise it as unlimited while the more recent and more specific ones list 10 credits — so verify on jetbrains.com/ai before budgeting. VAT is added by country unless you supply a VAT ID. Top-up credits are $1 each, valid twelve months.
Check your existing licence first. All Products Pack and dotUltimate include AI Pro. This is the single highest-value thing on this page.
AI Pro at $10 is the right default for anyone whose usage is completion plus occasional chat and the odd Junie task. It undercuts Cursor by half.
Only go Ultimate if you've measured. Thirty-five credits versus ten is a real difference for daily agent work and irrelevant otherwise. A month on Pro tells you which you are.
If credits are the problem, use BYOK. Junie CLI with your own key bills the provider directly and sidesteps the meter — often cheaper than upgrading, and rarely mentioned in comparisons.
For developers who already live in IntelliJ or PyCharm, JetBrains AI Assistant is the sensible default and $10 is a fair price for it. The integration is deeper than anything an extension achieves, because it reads the same semantic index that powers refactoring tools the rest of the industry has been catching up to for a decade. Junie is a credible autonomous agent with the useful property of understanding your project structure before it starts editing. Unlimited local completion on every tier, including free, means the everyday experience costs nothing extra.
The friction is billing, and every serious 2026 review lands on the same point. Credits are metered on top of an IDE licence you already pay for, which makes this a second line item rather than a single number. The free tier's 3 credits are a demo, not a trial — enough to see completion working, nowhere near enough to evaluate the agent. European buyers pay roughly 20% more than the sticker once VAT lands. And the whole thing is confined to JetBrains IDEs, so a mixed-editor team ends up buying two products.
The mitigations are real but underadvertised: your All Products Pack may already include Pro, and BYOK through Junie CLI removes the meter entirely.
For JVM and Python developers inside the ecosystem, recommend at AI Pro after checking your licence. For mixed-editor teams, Copilot is the more practical purchase.
Note: JetBrains does not currently have an affiliate program with AIVario. We earn no commission, and this rating carries no commercial incentive.
Best for: Java and Kotlin developers in IntelliJ, Python developers in PyCharm, shops standardised across JetBrains IDEs, anyone whose All Products Pack already includes it Not ideal for: Teams split between VS Code and JetBrains, developers who only want unmetered completion, heavy agent users on a fixed budget who won't use BYOK, Community Edition and Android Studio users Bottom line: The deepest IDE integration in the category at a fair $10 — provided you check whether your existing licence already covers it and know that BYOK sidesteps the credit meter.
Free at $0 with 3 AI credits per 30 days, AI Pro at $10 per user monthly with 10 credits, AI Ultimate at $30 with 35 credits, and AI Enterprise at around $60 per user billed annually. Annual billing brings Pro to roughly $8.33 and Ultimate to about $25. One credit corresponds to roughly a dollar of cloud compute. Business tiers are priced higher than individual ones — Pro Business is listed at $20 and Ultimate Business at $60.
Quite possibly, and this is the first thing to check. AI Pro is included with the All Products Pack and with dotUltimate subscriptions, so a large share of professional JetBrains users are entitled to it without a separate purchase. Subscribing on top is a straightforward waste of $120 a year. Sign in with your JetBrains Account inside the IDE and see what your licence already activates before entering card details.
Unlimited local completion, and roughly nothing agentic. AI Free ships 3 credits per 30 days, which the Junie or Claude agents can consume in a couple of tasks. It also excludes Community Editions, Android Studio and frontier models. Treat it as a permanent free autocomplete rather than a trial of the full product — for that, the 30-day AI Pro trial with an extended quota is the honest evaluation path.
JetBrains' autonomous coding agent, and the main reason to pay. You describe a task in natural language — refactor every API call to the new SDK, say — and Junie explores the project structure, makes the changes file by file, runs tests to check its own work, and comes back when it needs a decision. It's the same category of thing as Copilot's agent mode, with the advantage of running on top of JetBrains' existing semantic index of your project.
By cloud model work, not by typing. Local code completion is unlimited on every tier including free. Credits are spent on chat with frontier models, agent runs, and other cloud-powered features, and the burn rate depends heavily on which model you select. Published guidance puts one credit at roughly ten chat code-generation requests, forty in-editor generation requests, or several hundred documentation requests. Top-up credits are sold at $1 each and stay valid for twelve months.
Yes, with your own API key. Running Junie CLI in bring-your-own-key mode bills your model provider directly and bypasses the JetBrains credit pool, which can put your effective JetBrains AI cost at zero beyond the IDE licence you already hold. Local models through Ollama, LM Studio and llama.cpp are also supported. For heavy agentic users this is often cheaper than climbing to AI Ultimate, and it's the least-advertised part of the product.
Deeper, but metered where Copilot is flat. JetBrains AI uses the IDE's own semantic understanding of your project — the same index behind its refactoring tools — so suggestions and agent actions fit the codebase more precisely, particularly in Java and Kotlin. Copilot costs $10 with unmetered completions and a simpler bill, and its agent mode reached general availability on JetBrains in March 2026. The deciding factor is usually whether you prefer predictable billing or deeper integration.
Not in most of Europe. JetBrains adds VAT by country — roughly 20% across much of the EU — unless you supply a VAT ID, so a $10 AI Pro seat lands nearer $12 for an unregistered individual buyer. Worth factoring in when comparing against US-priced competitors whose listed numbers are what you actually pay.
No, and that's the structural limitation. AI Assistant is tied to JetBrains IDEs version 2025.1 or later. There's no VS Code build, no browser version, no way to take it with you. If your team is split across editors you'll be buying two tools, which is a real argument for standardising on something editor-agnostic like Copilot instead.
Still the fastest issue tracker for engineering teams — and after the plan restructure, the tier with the good features costs $16 instead of $50.
The AI code editor that became the default — now rebuilt around parallel agents in Cursor 3, with its own Composer models.
Terminal-native, model-agnostic, git-obsessed. Cheaper than the vendor CLIs and slightly less accurate — an explicit trade, not a hidden one.