# PlatformIO Reviews **Vendor:** PlatformIO **Category:** [Python Integrated Development Environments (IDE)](https://www.g2.com/categories/python-integrated-development-environments-ide) **Average Rating:** 4.7/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 12 ## About PlatformIO PlatformIO is an open source ecosystem for IoT development. Cross-platform build system. Continuous and IDE integration. Arduino and ARM mbed compatible. ## PlatformIO Reviews ### 1. Great tool to be more productive programming Arduino **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ivan A. | Investigador División Building Technologies, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 22, 2023 **What do you like best about PlatformIO?** Platformio is like Arduino IDE on steroids. More proffessional, more functionality and great plugins. **What do you dislike about PlatformIO?** It has a learning curse but nothing serious. You will be up and running in little time. **What problems is PlatformIO solving and how is that benefiting you?** I find PlatformIO much better and professional than Arduino IDE to program electronic boards. ### 2. PlatformIO: The All-in-One Solution for IoT Development **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Midhun M. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 08, 2023 **What do you like best about PlatformIO?** PlatformIO supports Windows, macOS, and Linux, allowing developers to work on their preferred platform. PlatformIO supports a wide range of frameworks and libraries, making it easy to manage dependencies and integrate new components into your projects. **What do you dislike about PlatformIO?** While PlatformIO provides a lot of features and capabilities, it can have a steep learning curve for those who are new to IoT development or unfamiliar with its specific features and interface. **What problems is PlatformIO solving and how is that benefiting you?** IoT development often involves multiple platforms, microcontrollers, and development boards, leading to a fragmented and complex development environment. PlatformIO provides a unified development environment that supports a wide range of platforms and devices, making it easier to develop and deploy code for IoT projects. ### 3. The best IDE for ESP32 **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** JOSE P. | Director of Engineering and Product Development, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 14, 2022 **What do you like best about PlatformIO?** PlatformIO is the best option when programming an ESP32 using the ARDUINO environment. Unfortunately, the ARDUINO IDE to simplify leaves out very important things that are now accessible from PlatformIO. **What do you dislike about PlatformIO?** I would like PlatformIO to be a complete IDE and not a plugin that is installed in a third-party IDE like VS Code, however, it works optimally. It would seem more appropriate to me that it be a single unit of software. **Recommendations to others considering PlatformIO:** If you need to program microcontrollers using the ARDUINO environment you should seriously consider using PlatformIO. If, on the other hand, you use the native ARDUINO IDE, faced with the first complication, the IDE does not have the necessary tools to solve these problems. **What problems is PlatformIO solving and how is that benefiting you?** The difference in work done from PlatformIO versus the native ARDUINO IDE is dramatic, from PlatformIO you can do a more efficient code search, thus allowing you to more easily find where you are making a mistake. With PlatformIO, development times are accelerated. ### 4. One of the best tool for embedded development. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Akash P. | CTO, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 31, 2022 **What do you like best about PlatformIO?** Integrating the IDE directly into VS code. Support a lot of Hardware Platforms and Software frameworks. Built-in debugging tools and performance analyzers. Really good community support. **What do you dislike about PlatformIO?** Not recommended for small projects. Only available in VS code. **What problems is PlatformIO solving and how is that benefiting you?** Advanced embedded development in cpp in VS code was not easy to set up. PlatformIO solves this problem with the one-click installation of toolchains. ### 5. Best Collaborative Platform for Embedded Development **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Partha R. | Lead Software Engineer, Computer Software, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 03, 2022 **What do you like best about PlatformIO?** Firstly the domain this platform is in isn't much crowded, and that's why finding something that has the most things you need has always been a struggle. But PlatformIO has provided such an amazing experience to everyone who uses it that there's no need to check out other solutions. In my opinion, the best features of the platform are - - Remote Development: This is, I think industry-first feature that lets you code/work on your project. Even though you aren't connected from your system they provides you a virtual machine with great computing power where you can do pretty much everything. - Great UI: PlatformIO has a great Developer friendly UI so that one won't face any UI/UX issue. - Predefined debugging configs - Here comes the thoughtfulness of the platform obviously you can debug in this, but along with that the platform has provided pre declared configurations for debugging which really helps a lot. - The unit testing feature is also works like a breeze **What do you dislike about PlatformIO?** There's nothing as such negative about PlatformIO, only thing I can think of which they can improve on is their documentation and regular blogs about new features. **What problems is PlatformIO solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have been extensively using PlatformIO for the below work - - Static Code Analyzer and Remote Unit Testing - Firmware File Explorer and Memory Inspection. - Cross-platform IDE and Unified Debugger for all our projects ### 6. It's good & professional. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Shivang K. | Lead Product Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 19, 2022 **What do you like best about PlatformIO?** The best thing for me is that it is Open source. I also like its cross-platform IDE and Unified Debugger; it is very light & has helpful features like "smart code completion." **What do you dislike about PlatformIO?** I haven't come across anything that I dislike yet, but it is a bit difficult for the very new people or just getting started in the field of embedded development. **What problems is PlatformIO solving and how is that benefiting you?** It is beneficial in developing Embedded systems, and its powerful debugging tools are helpful with the testing process. Its project wizard and examples help with new development. ### 7. One of the best Extension in Visual Studio Code platform for Arduino **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Haresh S. | Embedded System and firmware Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 03, 2021 **What do you like best about PlatformIO?** PlatformIO provides a wide range of Arduino libraries, and It has support for many devices like esp32 Wroom, Arduino UNO, ATmega32, and many more. We can easily install libraries using the library manager, and the best part is it provides INI files where we can change Bouadrates, Port, and much more. **What do you dislike about PlatformIO?** While using PlatformIO, sometimes program upload related issues accrued, and sometimes it does not provide recommendations using CTRL + SPACE one point I notice is that it is copy white space! **What problems is PlatformIO solving and how is that benefiting you?** Using PlatformIO Now, I haven't need to install a particular framework or library for a specific device like we have to do in Arduino IDE. One of the major problems solved was we can easily understand and learn the basics of Arduino in a simple way. ### 8. Great cross platform/IDE and cross target platform experience **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Steven R. L. | Independent Contractor, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 15, 2021 **What do you like best about PlatformIO?** I like how I can use one set of tools, and mix and match between VS Code IDE, or command line, among a plethora of target hardware and environments. The command line part has come in handy when running "remotely" using a raspberry pi over SSH as the development environment, **What do you dislike about PlatformIO?** Would be nice if the VSCode plugin was more integrated, i.e., if it knew about what project I had currently open. (If I'm working on project X, the platformio panels could adjust to reflect project X's board and prefs), But, the integration works fairly well. Also it would be helpful if the library search could give some more guidance—this is a hard problem, but even though there's popularity, the search order doesn't necessarily reflect the most successful and well maintained library, although the popularity does give some indication. **Recommendations to others considering PlatformIO:** Spend some time searching for information about the boards and libraries you are interested in, and see what options are available. **What problems is PlatformIO solving and how is that benefiting you?** A wide variety of projects.. mostly experiments such as a clock, as well as glue hardware for a work hackathon for work as well. The benefit is having one thing to install and not disparate tools or environments for each board. ### 9. Platformio great tool for embedded programming **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 07, 2021 **What do you like best about PlatformIO?** I uses platformio since last 3 year. Platformio having lot's of tricks, shortcut, ai auto complete and more which can save your time and optimise coding look and format. - No of extra extension can be used to optimise code, comment, colors, format. - Easy and descriptive tools to build and run. - Lot's of board/device support - All in one place - Run time code assistant and auto format **What do you dislike about PlatformIO?** So, as per my experience I only face minor issues but sometimes auto complete stop working and need to restart vs code or platformio. Everything else works like charm🙂. **Recommendations to others considering PlatformIO:** I suggest to use platformio over other tools. Because platformio having great tools, add-on, shortcut, auto complete, highlights, debug and more function with great accuracy and speed. Which makes your product efficient and great. **What problems is PlatformIO solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use platformio with vscode more often. Almost code every project in platformio. So, I think it's more faster, low footprint, easy and powerful tool for embedded coder. - Time saving - Code format makes code easy to understand - Easy to understand code with doxygen comments with add on - improve productivity ### 10. A must for IOT developing / prototyping **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer & Network Security | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 21, 2020 **What do you like best about PlatformIO?** PlatformIO is amazing in the way that allows you to access to an important quantity of developing hardware boards, also easy access to library repos and so on. Give you different tools as well, as a serial monitor, a terminal, and so on. Got everything you need, in one package. **What do you dislike about PlatformIO?** UI on PlatformIO, could be quite an experience. I personally think would be nice if the allow you to choose between a variety of themes, because UI tend to be really dark. **Recommendations to others considering PlatformIO:** PlatformIO will solve lots of headaches that comes with libraries importing and so on. **What problems is PlatformIO solving and how is that benefiting you?** PlatformIO allow you to access fast to everything you need when developing IOT hardware. You will have quick access to libraries, and won't have to struggle importing them, since this IDE will do everything for you. ### 11. PlatformIO Review **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 11, 2019 **What do you like best about PlatformIO?** Extremely lightweight. Plugin for Visual Studio code usage was very neat and easy. Can easily flash code onto any embedded devices with any kind of setting. Compilers are also convenient. Has a wide variety of support for a lot of embedded devices. **What do you dislike about PlatformIO?** The PlatformIO is a good software and I have not encountered with any problems with it so far. **What problems is PlatformIO solving and how is that benefiting you?** Flashing and communicating with sensors and other embedded controller like arduino and ESP8266. ### 12. The best all-in-one platform for embedded development **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Andrew K. | Chief Executive Officer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 17, 2019 **What do you like best about PlatformIO?** I regularly code different processors including AVR, Arduino, STM32, ESP32 and Nordic. Each one requires a different IDE and each one has its own issues. With PlatformIO you get to use VSCode and Atom which are incredible editors that work on Windows, Linux, and Mac. They also have all the plugins that I need. Now I can code all of of IOT devices within the same environment which simplifies my workflow immensely. **What do you dislike about PlatformIO?** I've noticed that we occasionally have issues when different modules update in VSCode. However, with a restart we generally find that there was something that needed to update in the background. **What problems is PlatformIO solving and how is that benefiting you?** I can work faster as all my coding is now in one editor. ## PlatformIO Discussions - [Is PlatformIO better than Arduino IDE?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/platformio-is-platformio-better-than-arduino-ide) - 1 comment - [View PlatformIO pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/platformio/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-05-17+09%3A39%3A00+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=f6ee7f1d-130e-4856-8979-5d05fe4ad422&secure%5Btoken%5D=aec1857fea249a037a8b84a808cc7bf7453a302679689c222f9522c6ceb45809&format=llm_user) ## PlatformIO Features **Functionality ** - Ease of Use - File Management - Multi-Language Support - Customization - Straight-Out-the-Box Functionality - Help Guides - Patching & Updates **Functionality** - Ease of Use - File Management - Multi-Language Support - Customization - Straight-Out-the-Box Functionality - Help Guides - Patching & Updates **Functionality** - Platform - Multi-Language Support - Performance - Help Guides - Ease of Use - Patches & Updates - Integrations **Functionality** - Ease of Use - File Management - Multi-Language Support - Customization - Straight-Out-the-Box Functionality - Help Guides - Patching & Updates ## Top PlatformIO Alternatives - [Eclipse](https://www.g2.com/products/eclipse/reviews) - 4.3/5.0 (3,078 reviews) - [Visual Studio](https://www.g2.com/products/visual-studio/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (3,802 reviews) - [PyCharm](https://www.g2.com/products/pycharm/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (758 reviews)