11 Best IDEs for Python developers in 2025

I’ve spent more late nights than I’d like to admit hopping between editors these past few months in search of the perfect IDE. What began as a one-time upgrade turned into a long exploratory journey.

I tried everything from the classic VS Code to the latest AI‑powered tools like Windsurf and Cursor. There are just so many IDEs out there today that it's hard to know which one to commit to.

In this article, I'll share my first‑hand findings and discuss some of the cool features and downsides each IDE possesses.

My methodology

While writing this piece, I took into account the following five key factors:

• Plugin & Ecosystem: How much support is there for third‑party plugins and does it integrate well with other tools and libraries?

• Pricing: Is it free, or subscription-based?

• Performance: Startup time, memory footprint, and general snappiness under load. - Configurability: What is the depth of customization available? Can I tailor every minute detail to my heart’s content?

• AI Integration: Are there built‑in code completions or agent‑style workflows?

And came up with the following results: 

Seamlessly switch between editors without losing your AI context

It's safe to outright say that this feat wouldn't have been possible without Pieces LTM-2, not saying even about the recent launch of  Nano-Models as the Pieces Team unveils LTM‑2.5. 

If you know me, you know I've been big on "vibe coding" lately, and it would be too jarring for my LLMs to constantly lose all their context every time I switch between editors.

You might be thinking to yourself, "It can recreate embeddings of your codebase from the version-controlled files". And you would be correct... But I still lose context of my history of prompts, attached files, etc. 

For example, I wouldn't be able to ask it what I was working on yesterday in Cursor when I'm using, say... PyCharm today. It flat-out wouldn't remember, or better put, it can't.

Pieces solves this by externalizing my AI context so it can be carried/referenced/re-injected into any new IDE or productivity tool of my choice. 

Literally! 

Pieces now ships with an MCP server, making it possible to interact with its Long-Term Memory from any MCP-compatible client such as GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor, etc.

This saves my time wasted on repetitive context-provisioning, allowing me to stay focused on the task at hand (awesome, I know right).

TL;DR: Switching editors with Pieces becomes far less detrimental.

P.S. If you want to see how they implemented MCP server, read out this guide.

Getting back to the best Python IDEs…

Visual Studio Code

Pricing: Free

Visual Studio Code is the de facto “Swiss Army knife” of code editors. It loads in a snap, it's completely open source, and the extension marketplace is a candy store: linters, formatters, debuggers, LSPs, snippets, you name it, it's on there.

I’ve used it for years, from everything from tiny scripting to building full‑stack web apps with Flask and Django, and it just works.

Its customizability is endless with first-class support for source control integrations like GitHub, which enables reviewing PRs right in your editor. It also supports an out-of-the-box Copilot setup.

In terms of AI, it's not lacking either. With the last month March release, VS Code now supports the famous agent mode we've all come to love from Cursor, plus the multi-line tab completion they call "Next Edit Suggestions".

Speaking of which, there's a Visual Studio Code plugin to seamlessly integrate Pieces.

In sum: Visual Studio Code has established itself as the go-to IDE for many developers because it's user-friendly and packed with every tool you would ever need right out of the box. Ask anyone, “What is the best IDE for Python?” and no doubt VS Code will always be in the conversation.

PyCharm

Pricing: Community edition is free with limited features, meanwhile, Pro edition costs $9.9 per month.

PyCharm is JetBrains’ flagship for Python development, and it's where the UNIX philosophy meets IDEs. If you don't know the UNIX philosophy, it simply means to do one thing and do it well.

And that's exactly what PyCharm does. The Pro edition supports every tool and framework you could ever encounter when working with Python, like uv, Flask, FastAPI, PyQT, Jupyter notebook, etc.

If you solely write Python, there's a high chance you're already using PyCharm or, at the very least, have in the past. If you're new to the ecosystem, PyCharm feels like a relic in your eyes because you get everything you need to get started out of the box.

Like every modern editor, it supports linters, formatters, debuggers, profilers, etc. But what really sets it apart is it scientific features like Matplotlib plots, DataFrame viewers, and various data visualizations built in. It lets you spin up Jupyter‑style cells right inside it and inspect variables on the fly.

To save critical variables and data for future reference, you can integrate it with Pieces JetBrains plugin to store/retrieve it.

In sum: PyCharm is designed specifically for Python, offering more tools and deep integration with the ecosystem. It's great for beginners, while the Pro edition provides extensive features for professionals. If data science is your jam, you're love it.

Jupyter Notebook/Lab

Pricing: Completely free

Jupyter’s interactive notebooks are a staple in the data science and machine learning world (or even exploratory coding). It allows you to mix narrative text, charts, and code cells into a single, unified interface.

When I first started learning Python, I used Python REPL as an exploratory way to test scripts quickly. Looking back, I probably should have used the notebooks instead, but hey – it worked, right? 😅

Classic notebook is nice, but it's a bit lightweight and more document‑centric compared to a full-blown IDE. That's where JupyterLab steps in. JupyterLab is the evolution of classic notebooks, featuring multi‑tab workspaces, integrated terminals, and rich text editors alongside code.

During my testing, I made better use of Jupyter Notebook paired with Pieces Drive.

For example, I ran a small experiment to train two different classifiers to predict who survived the Titanic. It’s part of a larger research I was working on at the time. For future easy retrieval, I save the notebooks into my personal Pieces Drive.

Once it’s stored, they get enriched with AI-generated descriptions, tags, and the links to relevant searches to help me remember the origin.

Fast-forward a few weeks, and I have to run new experiments. 

Instead of having to hunt for my little preprocessing scripts or notes, I can just query my saved materials in natural language, and Pieces will intelligently return the correct snippets I'm looking for — all while inside my editor.

Don’t mind the use of Jupyter extension inside VS Code here. Pieces is well supported for JupyterLab.

This creates a zen-like experience where I never have to break focus to switch between apps, because everything I need is literally at my fingertips.

In sum: Jupyter Lab is ideal for data-intensive work or anyone who thrives on interactive computing. It offers a flexible environment for experimentation and streamlined workflows. If you're new to Python or looking to dive in, it's a great way to get your feet wet.

Spyder

Pricing: Free

Spyder positions itself to be the MATLAB of Python. It offers an editor, IPython console, variable explorer, and plots pane. It combines the ease of use of Jupyter with many advanced features found in IDEs like PyCharm and VS Code (kind of an in-between balance).

To be fair, JupyterLab plus the right extensions can look and feel very much like Spyder. But the key difference is that Spyder is a standalone IDE and comes with all these, for what feels like the 10,000th time, out of the box. (Yes, I know I keep saying this. It's just that important!)

Personally, I find myself using Jupyter notebooks way more often than Spyder, and if a task exceeds notebooks’ limits, I quickly jump to a full IDE like PyCharm. Regardless, it’s still an okay choice for scientific and data exploration work.

In sum: Spyder sits neatly between Jupyter’s notebook interactivity and the heavyweight features of general‑purpose IDEs. Though its appeal narrows once you require collaboration tools.

Cursor

Pricing: Hobby plan is free for Individuals, while the Pro plan begins at $20 per month, and the Business plan for organizations starts at $40 per user per month.

VS Code reigned supreme in the IDE wars for a long time until an underdog surprised everyone... Cursor. I have to say, I was a bit late to the party and hesitant to adopt agentic workflows, but wow, it's really good.

Cursor gave birth to what we call today “vibe coding.” It bets on AI agentic workflows: you prompt the agent with what you want, it grabs context from your codebase or current buffer, and recursively calls itself until it’s done. No prompt engineering needed – just natural language.

Although it’s not built specifically for Python like PyCharm, its AI capabilities easily make up for it. And since it’s a fork of VS Code, it could easily be set up to feature parity with the extensions marketplace.

Cursor also supports the MCP protocol, which lets me bring Pieces Long‑Term Memory into it using Pieces MCP + Cursor Integration. Instead of switching tabs, windows, or contexts, my memories become part of my workflow.

After discovering this duo, I have to say, I'm something of a vibe coder myself.

In sum: If you consider yourself an AI aficionado, Cursor IDE offers a compelling package that's worth exploring.

Windsurf

Pricing: Offers a free tier, with a paid plan starting from $15 per month.

Windsurf (formerly known as Codeium) is an agentic IDE, very similar to Cursor. It brags on its ability for developers to work in tandem with AI (Agents + Copilots) to produce what they call a "flow state".

Having tried, it lives up to its hype and is just as good (or might I say, even better) as Cursor. You get the very same benefits where the AI makes inline suggestions to you like a Copilot and tackles complex tasks independently when prompted as an Agent.

It's also a fork VS Code (yes, there are a ton these days), so the UI feels very much at home and can install your favourite VS Code extensions.

One catch though. Those extensions come from the Open VSX Registry rather than the official VS Code marketplace. This is recently important for VS Code forks, as it seems Microsoft is cracking down on the use of its official extensions outside VS Code, as discussed in this issue.

So if you rely heavily on a specific extension, you might want to check if it's available before making the switch.

In sum: Windsurf is great for rapid prototyping with AI, and proves a competent challenger to Cursor. With the current state of features both possess, you can't go wrong with either or tbh.

Neovim

Pricing: Completely free

Neovim is a minimalist text editor known for its focus on keyboard shortcuts (better known as vim motions) with the configurability as wide as the ocean. Picture LEGO but for devs – endless pieces, zero instructions, but oh, the things you can build.

It's adored greatly in the dev community, earning the highest "most-admired" score of 83% from Stack Overflow Survey 2024.

Its startup time is blazingly fast, it uses minimal memory, and its shortcuts let you code at lightning speed. But it has its downsides.

Its vastness of configurability is a double-edged sword: you need to piece together multiple tools (pyslp, ruff, ruff-lsp, pyright, nvim-dap-python, neotest) to match the feature set of a full‑blown IDE like PyCharm or Visual Studio. There's also the notorious learning curve to using it compared to traditional text editors.

If you don't know where to begin with creating your config, feel free to use mine for inspiration.

In sum: If you don’t mind the learning curve, Neovim delivers peak performance at which you can convert your thoughts to code. It's made for devs or power users who're terminally committed to living in the shell.

Visual Studio

Pricing: Community version is free, but Professional and Enterprise cost $45 and $250 per month, respectively.

Visual Studio is the big brother to VS Code. It's sometimes regarded as the best free IDE for development on Windows using C# and .NET. Beyond the C ecosystem, it also comes with support for Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, and Node.js.

While Visual Studio is to C# what PyCharm is to Python, it still supports Python and data science workloads. It comes out of the box with IntelliSense, unit testing, virtual environment management, and interactive REPL support baked in.

The whole idea compared to VS Code is that you don’t have to hunt for extensions for your preferred language—it’s already set up for you.

It's good to know the macOS version of Visual Studio was deprecated over a year ago, so it’s now only supported on Windows.

In sum: Visual Studio is a solid IDE for C# and Python development through its built-in modules. If you’re developing exclusively on Windows OS with a language supported by Visual Studio, it's moderately okay.

Sublime Text

Pricing: Sublime licenses for Individuals cost $99. Business licenses are charged per seat at a rate of $65 per seat per year.

Sublime Text is an OG text editor that supports writing code in pretty much any programming language. It was a large denominator in paving the way of extending editors with plugins.

It's a package ecosystem that includes Anaconda for Python support and comes with linting, autocompletion, snippets, and all the other good stuff.

Though compared to VS Code, its ecosystem is easily eclipsed by the sheer extension count on VS Code marketplace (72,928 vs. 5,541) and first‑party support (GitHub, Dev Containers, etc.).

Also, Neovim "devotees" will point out that the endless customization via Lua makes Neovim just as flexible and more open than Sublime these days.

Hate to say it, but it's true Sublime was King back in the days, but it's 2025, there are just a lot better alternatives offering the same features for cheap or literally free (Thank you Microsoft! 🙂).

On the bright side, if you already have a purchased license, there's a Pieces plugin available for Sublime Text.

In sum: Sublime Text still shines with its minimal footprint and distraction‑free interface—but in 2025, its $99 license and slowing plugin ecosystem leave it hard‑pressed to compete with the free, feature‑rich alternatives.

Fleet

Pricing: Free

Fleet is JetBrains’ answer to VS Code. It's lightweight, supports multiple programming languages and operating systems, and integrates AI‑assisted coding. Rather than paying for a separate IDE for each language, Fleet aims to be the one‑stop shop for polyglots.

Getting Python up and running was as simple as installing the official plugin. It also has a "smart mode" feature that automatically detects your virtual environment and configures a Python interpreter for you instead, which is pretty neat.

But what I personally found really cool was its remote development feature, where you use your local machine as a thin client to connect to a remote machine, and use that remote instance to code.

“Why would I ever need that?”, you might ask.

Well, if you have a beefy computer at home or at the office, you can easily leverage its higher compute capacity from anywhere, not limited by proximity (so long as you have stable internet connection, of course). 

It also opens doors for real-time collaboration, where you can share terminals and debugging sessions with others to perform code reviews.

JetBrains is really cooking with this, and I love it! It's good to note it's still in early access, so a lot of things are prone to change.

In sum: Fleet brings most of JetBrains’ tooling into a sleek, lightweight package.

Firebase Studio

Pricing: Free up to three workspaces. Anymore will require Google Developer Program membership.

Firebase Studio isn’t your typical classic IDE. It's relatively new and launched in the middle of me writing this article. It is an agentic, cloud-based IDE that gives you AI assistance directly in your browser under a collaborative workspace.

It's almost like VS Code for the web, but it's selling point is its "App Prototyping agent" which supports generating full stack apps from popular frameworks and languages, including (but not limited to) Python, Java, .NET, Go, etc. and can deploy to the production handling the infrastructure (IAM, environment variables, triggers, etc.)

I tried it, and the App Prototyping failed to generate me a simple snake maze CLI using Python. So its claim about supporting other frameworks feels like a hoax.

Setting aside the AI fluff, it's a clone of VS Code (just like Cursor), so I could install all my favorite extensions, including the Pieces for VS Code plugin.

Hopefully, in the near future, the “App Prototyping” feature will be fixed for frameworks other than Next.js (that's the only thing that works currently).

In sum: Firebase Studio delivers a browser‑hosted IDE with VS Code familiarity and AI‑powered app scaffolding. Though its broader language support and agent reliability are still catching up.

Wrapping it up

So, is there a single best IDE for Python? Not really, it’s all preference. Depending on your coding style, you can choose any one, or even a mix of two (I personally use Neovim as my main and Cursor for its agent mode).

VS Code, and PyCharm cover 80% of devs. Jupyter and Spyder rock the data science world. Cursor and Firebase Studio push AI‑powered workflows. 

Neovim and Sublime serve keyboard-driven minimalists, and Visual Studio keeps polyglots in one seat.

Whatever you choose, just remember the best IDE is the one you bend to your workflow 😉.