Best Java Development Tools

Thymeleaf

Thymeleaf is a modern server-side Java template engine for both web and standalone environments.

Average Rating: 4.0/5.0

Total Reviews: 48

JRebel

JRebel is a productivity tool that allows developers to reload code changes instantly. You just save, refresh, and see the changes right away. To achieve this, JRebel does not wrap classloaders around classes, but patches existing classloaders to make classes loaded through them reloadable using instrumentation. JRebel tracks changes that you make in your workspace, and updates them as you go, so you can keep focused on the code and stay in the zone without interruption. As a JVM plugin, JRebel supports a majority of real-world enterprise Java stacks and is easy to install into existing development environments. With support for over 100 frameworks, and many popular application servers, IDEs, and JVM languages, JRebel works out of the box for almost every stack.

Average Rating: 4.1/5.0

Total Reviews: 19

MagicDraw

MagicDraw is the award-winning business process, architecture, software and system modeling tool with teamwork support. Designed for Business Analysts, Software Analysts, Programmers, QA Engineers, and Documentation Writers, this dynamic and versatile development tool facilitates analysis and design of Object Oriented (OO) systems and databases. It provides the industry's best code engineering mechanism (with full round-trip support for Java, C++, C#, CL (MSIL) and CORBA IDL programming languages), as well as database schema modeling, DDL generation and reverse engineering facilities.

Average Rating: 4.2/5.0

Total Reviews: 17

Rocket Visual COBOL

Visual COBOL provides COBOL development and integration tools—in your choice of Visual Studio or Eclipse—that offer programmers an unrivaled development experience.

Average Rating: 4.1/5.0

Total Reviews: 13

Quartz Job Scheduler

Quartz is a richly featured, open source job scheduling library that can be integrated within virtually any Java application - from the smallest stand-alone application to the largest e-commerce system.

Average Rating: 4.0/5.0

Total Reviews: 19

Webswing Software

Webswing is a web server that allows you to run any Java Swing application inside your web browser, using only pure HTML5.

Average Rating: 4.9/5.0

Total Reviews: 4

Eclipse Web Tools Platform

The Eclipse Web Tools Platform (WTP) project extends the Eclipse platform with tools for developing Web and Java EE applications. It includes source and graphical editors for a variety of languages, wizards and built-in applications to simplify development, and tools and APIs to support deploying, running, and testing apps.

Average Rating: 4.0/5.0

Total Reviews: 3

Diffblue Cover

Diffblue Cover is an AI agent for automating the generation, maintenance and management of Java unit tests. Unlike LLM-based coding assistants that help write individual tests when prompted, Diffblue Cover uses reinforcement learning (RL) to autonomously produce comprehensive coverage across entire codebases, perfect for meeting coverage gates, catching regressions, and shipping with confidence.

 Proven at Enterprise Scale: * US Aerospace and Defense company: 1M lines of code coverage initiative * Goldman Sachs: From 36% to 72% in less than 10% of the time it would take to do it manually * US Pension & Retirement System: 70% unit coverage without manual effort * Handles what others can't: Complex Spring contexts, Guice, legacy singletons, millions of lines of codeLOC without OOM errors, tests are guaranteed to compile and pass Diffblue Cover augments developers by automating away tedious and time-consuming aspects of the Java unit test generation process.

 Documents actual behavior: 
 Unit tests reveal what your code really does (not what comments claim), essential for understanding legacy systems and inherited codebases.

 Enables rapid coverage increases: 
 Creates unit tests in bulk, covering all relevant branches to rapidly improve coverage and enable teams to reach and maintain coverage goals. Handles enterprise complexity: 
 Works with complex Spring contexts, Mockito configurations, and legacy patterns that cause other tools to fail with OOM errors.

 Enables safe refactoring: 
 Create regression safety net before Java version upgrades, cloud migrations, or modernization initiatives. Know what breaks before production.

 Secures inherited codebases: 
 Generate comprehensive test suites for acquired or legacy code with 0% coverage, creating a safety net for integration and modification.

 Unblocks CI/CD pipelines: 
 Rapidly increase coverage to meet gates blocking your deployments, achieving in days what would take months manually. Use Cases: Accelerate Development: ✓ Sprint velocity improvement - Stop spending 30-50% of time writing tests
 ✓ New feature protection - Ensure all new code has regression tests
 ✓ Refactoring confidence - Safe changes with comprehensive test coverage
 ✓ Code review acceleration - PRs include tests automatically Meet Requirements: ✓ Coverage gates and requirements - Achieve targets faster than manual writing
✓ Compliance mandates - SOC2/ISO/MRM requiring test evidence
 ✓ Quality initiatives - Systematic improvement of test coverage
 ✓ Technical debt reduction - Address testing gaps efficiently Enable Transformation: ✓ Java version upgrades - Test safety net for 8→11/17/21 migrations
 ✓ Architecture modernization - Confidence to refactor and improve
 ✓ Cloud migration - Ensure functionality during platform changes
 ✓ M&A integration - Quickly understand and test acquired code

Average Rating: 3.9/5.0

Total Reviews: 4

Apache IvyDE

Apache IvyDE is a Eclipse plugin designed to integrate Apache Ivy's dependency management into Eclipse.

Average Rating: 3.5/5.0

Total Reviews: 1

CODEMR

CodeMR is an architectural software quality and static code analysis tool that supports multiple languages (Java, Scala, Kotlin, C++) and has integrations for multiple IDEs (Eclipse and IntelliJ). CodeMR visualizes code metrics and high level quality attributes (Coupling, Complexity, Size) for C++, Java and Kotlin and Scala projects in different views, such as Package Structure, TreeMap, Sunburst, Dependency and Graph Views. The graph visualization technique applied in CodeMR is simple yet intuitive. CodeMR has different filtering options and supports custom queries. It visualizes high-level Object Oriented quality attributes and low level metrics. Quality attributes are derived from the combinations of several metrics. You can also create different HTML reports for the project. With Community Edition you can extract up to 50 source files and 60 classes.

Average Rating: 4.0/5.0

Total Reviews: 1

Arachnophilia

Arachnophilia is a Web page development workshop and general programming tool.

Asprise Software

Asprise is a software development company that focuses on document imaging and OCR (optical character recognition) technologies. Based in Asia, Asprise offers SDK's (software development kits) and programming library APIs to international clients. Asprise Scanning and Image Capture SDK (previously known as 'JTwain') has been widely used by the financial industry to implement check scanning and document management systems. Asprise OCR SDK has also been highly sought after thanks to its high performance and royalty-free distribution model.

DavKit

DavKit adds one-click Microsoft Office editing to Java web applications. Users open Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents stored inside your Spring Boot or Grails app - database blobs, object storage or files - edit them in real desktop Office, and save changes straight back, with locking to prevent conflicts. No document server to run, no browser-editor fidelity compromises, no download/edit/re-upload workflow. DavKit implements Office-aware WebDAV for you: Office's discovery probes, locking, MS-OFBA and Basic authentication, and expiring signed URLs. Integration is a Spring Boot starter or Grails plugin from Maven Central plus one storage provider class; your app keeps its own access rules and documents never leave it. Ideal for document-heavy systems - legal, insurance, property, HR - where users edit templates, contracts and reports daily. Verified against real Word on Windows and macOS. Apache 2.0 open source integrations; commercial core with free evaluation.

Helium

Project Helium is a Java (JDK 24) microservice foundation designed to help teams move faster without compromising on quality. Whether you're launching a new product or modernizing legacy systems. It comes with modular integrations built for real-world backend systems—from environment configs and multi-tenant auth to observability and deployment pipelines. Features like TLS/mTLS, SSO, multi-OIDC provider support, and OpenTelemetry are included out of the box, making it easier to get production-ready infrastructure up and running quickly. It also supports LLM-based use cases through integration with LangChain4j, enabling teams to build AI-assisted features natively within Helidon services. Built on established patterns like Domain-Driven Design (DDD) and Hexagonal Architecture, it offers ready-to-use examples and a consistent layout that accelerate onboarding and promote long-term maintainability. Powered by Oracle Helidon SE 4—formerly Helidon Nima—Project Helium delivers unmatched performance, efficiency, and security through its lightweight runtime and virtual threads support.

InstallBuilder

InstallBuilder is a multiplatform installer development tool that simplifies packaging and delivering installers for cross-platform software. Here are some key features: - Cross-Platform Support: InstallBuilder allows you to create dynamic, professional installers for Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, Solaris, and other platforms from a single project file and build environment. - Built-In Debugger: Easily troubleshoot your application installation process by identifying and correcting issues during installer development. You can view and interactively edit installer variables at runtim\ e, perform step-by-step execution, and recover from unexpected errors. - Auto-Update Functionality: Keep users running the latest version of your software by delivering updates directly to them. Regular updates enhance customer satisfaction and reduce support costs. - Language Independence: Install applications written in any language, including Java, PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, C/C++, Flash, Flex, and .NET/Mono. - Optimized Installers: InstallBuilder generates smaller and faster installers compared to Java-based alternatives. It doesn’t require bundling a Java Runtime or self-extraction, reducing download, startup, and \ installation time. - Multiple Installation Modes: Deploy in any environment using GUI modes (native look-and-feel), text mode (console-based and remote installations), and silent/unattended mode for large-scale server deployment. - Desktop Integration: Provides native look and feel on Windows, OS X, KDE, and Gnome platforms. In summary, InstallBuilder streamlines the process of creating cross-platform installers and ensures efficient software distribution and update. Find out more on installbuilder.com