Starting with version 2025.2, the LSP API will be fully available in IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate, regardless of whether a user has a paid license or no license at all.
If your subscription expires, you won’t be locked out of the IDE. Instead, you will continue to have access to the full IDE, but with the feature set matching what is available for free (previously known as Community Edition).
and also:
But even without a subscription, the IDE will remain fully functional, free to use for both commercial and non-commercial projects, and will include more features than the current Community Edition ever had.
While the LSP implementation is not part of the Community Edition, it will still remain enabled in IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate even without an active paid subscription. Although closed-source, the LSP implementation will remain fully available for third-party plugins free of charge.
Thanks.
Just to be sure, will Open Source Builds on GitHub (2025.3+) be able to run paid plugins?
Unified and Open Source builds are new, and I simply need to confirm some points.
I’m saying that because the license facade is handled by the JetBrains Marketplace Licensing plugin. It doesn’t work well with 2024 Community IDEs (YT issue), it seems OK with 2025.1 and .2 regular IDEs (Community and Paid), but this is not clear for Unified and Open Source Builds.
Yes, there will be this plugin as now. It is installed automatically now if a plugin depends on it. Only it is not in the installer of OSS the version, from the Marketplace.
We still have Android Studio and it needs it as well
Ok, got it, thanks. What is the recommendation for plugin developers for the transaction versions like 2025.2 and 2025.3? Keep targeting IC or migrate the gradle.properties to IU?
If you want to build your plugins easier and have access to all APIs, such as LSP, Templates, Diagrams I would definitely recommend that you use IU platform and optional XML configuration for modules that will be activated in our IDEs. This way you do not need a complicated build and Community is still supported via a graceful degradation.
Plugin developers should target IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate 2025.2.1+ and include the optional dependency on the com.intellij.modules.lsp module in the plugin.xml file.
For me, it is still unclear how this will affect users currently using IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition or other JetBrains IDEs.
My plugin currently uses the IC (Community) platform type and is predominantly used by Rider users.
Could you please elaborate on this recommendation, especially when migrating from IC?
If we target IJ Ultimate, how can we check can we’re not using classes or extension points present in the paid version?
With IJ Community, it was clear. But now you said we will have to target IJ Ultimate, I have to admit I’m a bit lost. Recommendations would be appreciated.
One more thing: how can we test a sandboxed IDE with and without a paid license for IJ Ultimate? I’m currently testing my plugins in two sandboxed IDEs: IJ Community and IJ Ultimate (my license is activated for sandboxed IDEs). What should I do to test my plugins in a sandboxed IJ Ultimate with and without my paid license? I mean, without having to register my license, unregister, register again and again…
