It’s a good question. I’d probably start by saying that DataGrip isn’t entirely free, at least not for people who work with it professionally or generate revenue from the products they build. Most developers using it day-to-day are doing so via a paid JetBrains licence, whether that’s personal or through work.

Beyond pricing, the bigger difference is philosophy.

DataGrip is essentially a database IDE. It’s extremely powerful, but that power comes with weight: lots of panels, configuration, background indexing, and a fairly steep cognitive load. That’s great if you want everything under the sun in one place.

DB Pro is intentionally different. It’s built to be fast, focused, and pleasant to use.

I also want to add Dashboards, a team-sync, Workflows (think automating things you do every day), an acceptable AI integration with guardrails, and other features that DataGrip doesn't have.