Research

Organizations already spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on software, so it’s only natural that when they evaluate new paid tools, one question is top of mind: “Will this actually pay off?”

Our ROI (return on investment) calculator was designed to help estimate the potential gains of JetBrains IDEs and AI Ultimate subscriptions. The ROI estimates are based on a model built on a combination of user-provided inputs, internal research, and a set of assumptions about developer workflows. These estimates are illustrative only and are not a guarantee of actual results, which may vary significantly across organizations.

This article breaks down the methodology behind the calculator so that you can understand how we estimated the potential return on your investment in JetBrains IDEs and AI solutions and evaluate whether they’re worth the purchase.

Data sources

First, let us explain where we obtained the data on salaries and developer productivity gains that we use in our calculations.

Salary data

By default, the calculator equates the cost of development work with the cost of developer salaries, and the number of developers is equal to the number of licenses selected (i.e. if you select five IntelliJ IDEA licenses, the calculator will assume there are five developers on your team).

In step one (estimate your annual gains), the calculator uses regional salary benchmarks for calculations. The data used to create these benchmarks was taken from the responses to the JetBrains’ State of Developer Ecosystem Survey, You can also check the benchmarks in our IT Salary Calculator – they come from the same source.

The JetBrains State of Developer Ecosystem Survey is conducted annually and in 2025 collected responses from over 20,000 developers worldwide, covering software professionals across different industries, company sizes, and seniority levels. It is widely referenced and used throughout the IT industry.

To get the most reliable data for our calculator, from all the survey respondents, we only select employed specialists for the benchmarks. We then anonymously group the responses by country, aggregating thousands of individual responses into country-level median salaries. These aggregated medians are then used as regional defaults.

If you do not want to use the default salary benchmarks, the calculator also allows you to refine your estimate by providing the total annual project cost. In that case, the total productivity savings will be applied to the amount you provided.

Productivity data

Productivity improvements assumed by the ROI calculator are based on dedicated, product-specific surveys conducted among professional developers.

Time savings are calculated from developers’ self-reported estimates. The use of self-reported data is a common practice in developer productivity research, including research conducted by tool vendors. Individual results may vary depending on organizational and workflow-specific factors. To make the data more specific, we aim to conduct separate productivity surveys for four major developer workflow groups:

• Managed languages – concluded
• System languages – concluded
• Data / data science – in progress
• .NET and GameDev – in progress

The surveys were designed by JetBrains Developer Experience researchers and reviewed by survey experts. Respondents are professional developers who switched from other editors or IDEs to specific JetBrains tools.

Managed languages productivity survey

Results from this survey are applied to the following products: IntelliJ IDEA, WebStorm, PhpStorm, RubyMine, PyCharm Pro (for backend), and the All Products Pack. These products represent managed-language workflows including Java, Kotlin, JavaScript/TypeScript, PHP, Ruby, and backend Python.

Respondents included: 194 individual contributors in roles such as Software Engineer / Developer / Programmer, DevOps Engineer / Infrastructure Developer, Database Administrator, and Architect.

We only included responses from people who had used JetBrains IDEs for a period of between two months and five years, and who had previously used other editors or IDEs.

The survey encompasses developers from multiple countries, with most responses coming from the United States, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, and Denmark. Therefore, these countries were categorized into separate groups and responses from all other countries fell into the “Other” category.

System languages productivity survey

Results from this survey are applied to the following products: CLion, GoLand, and RustRover. These products support system-level and performance-critical development workflows in C, C++, Rust, and Go.

Respondents included: 846 individual contributors primarily in roles such as Software Engineer / Developer / Programmer, Architect, DevOps Engineer / Infrastructure Developer, with a smaller number of respondents representing other individual contributor roles involved in code-related activities.

The survey was promoted globally via in-IDE notifications and had the highest representation in Germany, the United States, and Mainland China.

.NET and GameDev, and data / data science productivity survey

Dedicated productivity surveys for these roles are currently in progress. Until those results are finalized, the calculator uses productivity patterns derived from managed-language workflows as a conservative proxy.

Results from the .NET and GameDev survey will be applied to dotUltimate, ReSharper, and Rider.

Results from the data / data science productivity survey will be applied to PyCharm Pro (for data science), DataGrip, and DataSpell. These products support data engineering, analytics, SQL workflows, and data science use cases. 

Productivity calculations

How the productivity boost is calculated

All productivity surveys listed above included the core question: “On average, how many hours per week do you think you save by using [product] compared to the similar tools you used before?” Additionally, respondents also reported their average weekly working hours, as well as their country of employment, role, and level of position.

Based on that, we estimated:

Productivity boost = hours saved per week / total weekly working hours

The resulting values were then:

1. Averaged across respondents
2. Segmented by product group and region
3. Applied conservatively and only to tasks where tools help directly

How productivity is applied

Rather than assume that “a developer is always x% faster,” we used a three-step task-based model.

1. We identified IDE-relevant work

External research (Microsoft Developer Productivity Study, 2024) shows developers spend approximately 45% of their working time inside the IDE, while the remaining 55% is devoted to administrative work, meetings, planning, etc. Actual proportions may vary by team and role.

2. We applied productivity boosts estimated from the survey responses

We applied the IDE productivity boost to 45% of total working time – the amount developers actually spend in their IDEs.

We applied an AI productivity boost to 55% of all tasks, including documentation and analysis. The productivity boost for AI was calculated from a JetBrains-led Junie Developer Experience survey of 241 individual contributors, primarily holding roles such as Developer / Programmer / Software Engineer, Architect, DevOps Engineer / Infrastructure Developer.

3. We combined the effects of IDEs and AI

On overlapping tasks, gains are combined according to the following formula:

Combined boost = IDE boost + AI boost – (IDE boost x AI boost)

An additional 10% AI-only boost accounts for tasks where AI increases productivity outside of the IDE.

Financial calculations

The total ROI (financial gains) is estimated as the difference between productivity savings and investment cost. All prices used for calculating the investment cost are pre-tax annual license prices.

Net gain = Total productivity savings – Pre-tax investment cost

ROI (%) = (net gain / cost) × 100

Investment cost

The investment cost pre-tax is:

Cost = (pre-tax IDE license price x number of licenses) + (pre-tax AI Ultimate license price x number of licenses)

After applying the above formula, the result is adjusted for project duration.

Total productivity savings

Total productivity savings are calculated as follows:

If AI is disabled → total savings = IDE savings

If AI is enabled → total savings = AI overlap savings + AI-only savings

Where:

• IDE savings = (salary x duration) x 45% × IDE boost
• AI-only savings = (salary x duration) x 10% x AI boost
• AI overlap savings = (salary x duration) x 45% x (IDE boost + AI boost – IDE boost * AI boost)

Important notice

The model described above relies on several simplifying assumptions, including average salary benchmarks, self-reported productivity improvements, and generalized developer workflows, which may not reflect every organization’s specific circumstances.

Summary

The JetBrains ROI Calculator attempts to capture and quantify something that teams already feel – that better tools reduce friction, which translates into meaningful time savings.

By combining large-scale salary benchmarks, feedback from hundreds of developers, and a task-based productivity model, we believe that the JetBrains ROI calculator provides a conservative yet realistic estimate of potential productivity gains and related benefits.

The methodology described above is intended to provide transparency into how the estimates were made. The resulting calculations are illustrative and should not be interpreted as guarantees of financial or productivity outcomes.