CLion Is Now Free for Non-Commercial Use

Great news for C and C++ developers: CLion is now free for non-commercial use! Whether you’re a student, hobbyist, or contributing to open-source projects, you can use CLion at no cost — as long as your work isn’t commercial.

What’s Happening?

JetBrains is expanding its non-commercial license model, previously introduced for RustRover, Rider, and WebStorm, to CLion. Non-commercial use includes learning, open-source contributions, content creation, and hobby development. For commercial purposes, the existing paid subscription model remains.

Note: This update is specific to CLion and does not apply to all JetBrains IDEs yet.

Why This Change?

JetBrains aims to make its IDEs accessible to a broader audience, lowering barriers for developers to learn and create.

Commercial vs. Non-Commercial Use

Commercial use means developing products for commercial benefit. Non-commercial includes learning, open-source, content creation, and hobbies. If you have a non-commercial license, anonymous usage statistics are collected to help JetBrains improve the product.

FAQ Highlights

• Features: The non-commercial license offers a fully-featured IDE, except Code With Me is limited to the Community version.
• License Choice: For both commercial and non-commercial use, choose a commercial subscription.
• Renewals: Non-commercial licenses renew yearly if the IDE is used at least once in the last 6 months.
• Anonymous Data: You cannot opt out of sending anonymized statistics with the non-commercial license.
• Getting the License: Select Non-commercial use in the license dialog at startup, log in or create a JetBrains account, and accept the agreement. For existing users, go to Help > Register, remove the current license, and choose Non-commercial use.
• Version Requirement: Non-commercial licenses are only available for CLion 2025.1.1 and newer.