JetBrains Student License (2026): Free IDEs and AI Trial for Students

Short answer: JetBrains gives students a free one-year educational license for its whole range of professional tools, including IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate, PyCharm, WebStorm, Rider, CLion, DataGrip, ReSharper and the other .NET tools. You can renew it each year while you are still a student. The license is for non-commercial educational use only. It doesn't include JetBrains AI Pro. You get the AI Free tier and a 30-day AI Pro trial.

What you get with the Student Pack

JetBrains' sales FAQ says the free Student or Teacher Pack includes IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate, ReSharper, all other JetBrains IDEs and the .NET tools. In practice that's the All Products Pack. JetBrains' pricing page describes that pack as 12 IDEs, 3 extensions, 2 profilers and a collaborative development service in one subscription.

What it's worth: JetBrains' own price data for the All Products Pack, shown on its site for Germany before VAT, is €299 for the first year of a personal subscription. That drops to €239 in year two and €179 from year three, or €29.90 billed monthly. Prices vary by country and tax, but a student license saves roughly a few hundred euros or dollars a year. The heise news site reported that JetBrains raised the personal All Products Pack price from €289 to €299 on October 1, 2025.

JetBrains AI for students: what's free and what isn't

This is the most common point of confusion. JetBrains' AI FAQ says paid All Products Pack and dotUltimate subscribers get AI Pro at no extra cost. It also says AI Pro isn't included in complimentary All Products Pack subscriptions for students, teachers and classrooms, or for Open Source program participants. Here is what students get instead:

• AI Free, available to holders of educational licenses who have an active JetBrains IDE license. It includes unlimited code completion from JetBrains' Mellum model, unlimited use of local models through Ollama, LM Studio or other OpenAI-compatible servers, and a limited cloud quota for third-party models. JetBrains doesn't publish the size of that quota.
• A 30-day AI Pro trial, which starts when you first activate JetBrains AI. JetBrains' help docs list free educational and classroom licenses as eligible from IDE version 2024.2.1. People with non-paid licenses may be asked to add a payment method, but the trial stays free. When it ends, you move to AI Free automatically unless you buy a plan.
• Top-up AI credits can be bought to extend cloud AI usage, but only with an active JetBrains AI license. They last 12 months.

If you want more cloud AI inside a JetBrains IDE without paying, run a local model through Ollama or LM Studio. AI Free allows unlimited local-model use. For a free cloud coding assistant, see GitHub Copilot for students. Copilot has a JetBrains plugin.

Who qualifies

JetBrains' eligibility page for students and faculty says the license is for students and faculty at accredited educational institutions: high schools, colleges and universities. Students must be enrolled in an accredited program that takes one or more years of full-time study to complete. Use is limited to non-commercial education.

Ways to verify

1. University email. Use an address on a domain that JetBrains recognizes as belonging to a school. JetBrains support staff say the domain must be in the open-source SWOT list of academic domains.
2. ISIC or ITIC card. The International Student or Teacher Identity Card works if your school doesn't issue email addresses on a recognized domain.
3. GitHub Student Developer Pack. Link the GitHub account that GitHub has already verified as a student. See our GitHub Student Developer Pack page for how GitHub verifies students.
4. Official documents. A JetBrains eligibility page still lists a copy of your student or teacher ID. JetBrains support staff have said that since July 2024 the standard flow no longer accepts official documents. They have still asked for a PDF proof of status in some renewal cases. Treat documents as a support-ticket fallback, not a main route.

Edge cases

• Part-time and short programs. The one-year full-time rule means short courses and many part-time programs may not qualify. JetBrains support has turned down one university's open-education faculty, saying it enrolls working professionals, which conflicts with the non-commercial rule.
• Bootcamps. JetBrains doesn't list bootcamp students as eligible on their own. Instructors can request classroom licenses for their courses through JetBrains' classroom program.
• High school students. Accredited high schools are listed as eligible.

How to apply, step by step

1. Open the Student Pack page and choose to apply, or go straight to the student application form.
2. Pick your verification method: university email, ISIC/ITIC card or GitHub.
3. With email, JetBrains sends a confirmation link to your school address. Click it, then sign in to or create your JetBrains Account. With GitHub, you authorize JetBrains to check your Student Developer Pack status.
4. Accept the educational license terms. The license appears in your JetBrains Account.
5. In any JetBrains IDE, choose to activate with your JetBrains Account and log in. The IDE picks up the educational license.
6. To use AI, open the AI chat or AI settings in the IDE and activate JetBrains AI. This starts the 30-day AI Pro trial. Afterwards you stay on AI Free.

Renewal, graduation and what it costs afterwards

• Annual renewal. The license lasts 12 months. JetBrains support says you can renew it every year until you graduate, using the renewal link in your JetBrains Account or the reminder email sent about a week before the license expires. You need to meet one of the verification criteria again.
• Graduation discount. JetBrains' sales FAQ says graduates can get 40% off a new personal subscription to any single product or the All Products Pack, valid for two years after the student license expires. With JetBrains' first-year price for Germany, the All Products Pack would be €299 × 0.6 = €179.40 before VAT.
• Your projects stay yours. Project files live on your own computer or in Git. Losing the license affects the IDE, not your code.
• Free fallbacks. WebStorm, Rider, RustRover and CLion are free for non-commercial use for everyone, so hobby projects can carry on after you graduate. PyCharm and IntelliJ IDEA also have free tiers, but JetBrains' AI FAQ says AI Free isn't available in IntelliJ IDEA without Ultimate or in PyCharm without Pro.

Educational license vs free non-commercial license

Since 2024, JetBrains has made some IDEs free for non-commercial use for anyone. These are RustRover, WebStorm and Rider (October 2024) and CLion (May 2025). You choose Non-commercial use in the IDE's license dialog and accept the Toolbox Subscription Agreement for Non-Commercial Use. Support is limited to community forums and issue trackers. If you only need one of those IDEs, the non-commercial license avoids yearly student verification. If you need IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate, DataGrip, PhpStorm, GoLand or ReSharper, or want everything under one account, the student license is still the better choice.

Getting the most out of it

• Use the right IDE for each course. PyCharm for data science and Python, IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate for Java and Spring, DataGrip for database classes, CLion for systems courses, and Rider or ReSharper for C#.
• Save the AI Pro trial for a heavy month, such as a capstone project or exam crunch. You only get one 30-day trial, and it starts when you first activate JetBrains AI.
• Pair it with other free AI. GitHub Copilot works inside JetBrains IDEs. The Gemini API free tier and other free AI API keys can power your own projects.
• Compare AI-first editors. If you want an editor built around AI, see Cursor pricing. Cursor's free student year closed to new sign-ups in June 2026 (details).

Common mistakes

• Expecting AI Pro to be included. The paid All Products Pack includes AI Pro, but the free student version doesn't.
• Using the license for paid work. Freelance and internship work for a company is commercial use, which the educational license doesn't allow.
• Letting the email lapse. If your school email stops working before renewal, switch to ISIC or GitHub verification, or contact JetBrains support.
• Reusing a GitHub account linked elsewhere. Users have reported renewal problems when the GitHub account was already linked to another JetBrains application. Support has resolved these case by case.