Developer tools maker JetBrains has declared its Junie AI coding agent production-ready, updated its older AI Assistant with support for new models, and introduced a free tier for users of its latest 2025.1 IDEs.

Offering two distinct AI tools is confusing, but JetBrains regards them as complementary. The difference is that AI Assistant provides code-related help and AI suggestions, while Junie is an agent capable of multi-step tasks, including writing code and running tests.

The availability of Junie is currently limited to IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate, PyCharm Pro, WebStorm, and GoLand. Coming next is PhpStorm, RubyMine and RustRover; but there is no word on Rider (C# IDE), CLion (C/C++), or Fleet (next generation IDE but perhaps no longer a key focus for the company.) 

AI Assistant has added support for new models including Anthropic Claude 3.7 Sonnet and Google Gemini 2.5 Pro. A new edit mode enables multi-file edits from the chat interface.

The context for this is that while JetBrains tools are well-liked by developers, the company has been coming from behind in AI assistance. Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code (VS Code) is tightly integrated with GitHub Copilot, and other AI-powered IDEs such as Cursor and Windsurf are recent AI-focused competitors.

AI Assistant suffers from poor developer reviews and is currently rated with just two stars out of five on the official plugin page, despite over 21 million downloads. “Around 50% of the time I encountered ‘Oops’ errors … autocomplete is practically useless – even GitHub Copilot suggestions are better” said a review today.

Junie is faring better, though it is early days. “Was using Windsurf/Cascade and Junie is providing me with more complete answers and fewer bugs and missed templates in my django app,” said a reviewer last week. That said, there are some complaints about “crashes and IDE restarts” as well as concern about the speed at which quota is used, even for those with a paid subscription.

The offer of a free tier may be driven by competition, and follows GitHub which did the same for Copilot late in 2024. The JetBrains free option supports unlimited code completion and local AI, according to the pricing, plus a “small cloud credit quota.”

The exact availability of AI features in different IDEs is complex and a careful read of the FAQ is recommended. 

The option for local AI, which uses Ollama or LM Studio for running AI offline, is valuable for developers keen to avoid sending their code to the cloud for processing. However, local code completion is not available in IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition or PyCharm without a Pro subscription.