Are you feeling frustrated by constantly trying to find and fix bugs in your code with no clear end in sight? These issues can eat up hours of your time and still leave your application broken or unstable. That’s why many developers rely on tools that can speed up the process, catch errors faster, and improve code quality. In this article, we’ll explore the 12 best debugging tools to help you streamline your development workflow. Let’s get started!
12 Best Debugging Tools to Help You Find and Fix Bugs Faster Than Ever
1. Zencoder
Zencoder is an AI-powered coding agent that enhances the software development lifecycle (SDLC) by improving productivity, accuracy, and creativity through advanced artificial intelligence solutions. With the powerful Coding Agent feature, Zencoder takes the hassle out of debugging and complex refactoring. This intelligent assistant helps you move faster and work smarter across multiple files by:
- Quickly spotting and fixing bugs, cleaning up broken code, and smoothly handling tasks across your entire project.
- Automating repetitive or complex workflows to save you time and effort.
- Accelerating full app development so you can focus on the creative, high-impact work that truly matters.
Powered by its advanced Repo Grokking™ technology, Zencoder thoroughly analyzes your entire codebase, identifying structural patterns, architectural logic, and custom implementations. This deep, context-aware understanding enables Zencoder to provide precise recommendations, significantly improving code writing, debugging, and optimization.
Additionally, Zencoder integrates with your existing development tools and supports over 70 programming languages, working effortlessly with popular IDEs such as Visual Studio Code and JetBrains.
Key Features:
1️⃣ Integrations – Zencoder seamlessly integrates with over 20 developer environments, simplifying your entire development lifecycle. This makes it the only AI coding agent offering this extensive level of integration.
2️⃣ Zentester – Zentester uses AI to automate testing at every level, so your team can catch bugs early and ship high-quality code faster. Just describe what you want to test in plain English, and Zentester takes care of the rest, adapting as your code evolves.
Here is what it does:
- Our intelligent agents understand your app and interact naturally across the UI, API, and database layers.
- As your code changes, Zentester automatically updates your tests, eliminating the need for constant rewriting.
- From individual unit functions to full end-to-end user flows, every layer of your app is thoroughly tested at scale.
- Zentester’s AI identifies risky code paths, uncovers hidden edge cases, and generates tests based on how real users interact with your app.
3️⃣ Code Review Agent – Provides targeted code reviews at every level, from full files to individual lines. Receive clear, actionable feedback to improve code quality, security, and best practice adherence.
4️⃣ Code Generation – Accelerate development with clean, context-aware code automatically generated and inserted into your project. Ensure consistency, improve efficiency, and move faster with production-ready output.
5️⃣ Zen Agents – Zen Agents are customizable AI teammates that understand your code, integrate with your tools, and are ready to launch in seconds.
Here is what you can do:
- Build smarter – Create specialized agents for tasks like pull request reviews, testing, or refactoring, tailored to your architecture and frameworks.
- Integrate quickly – Connect to tools like Jira, GitHub, and Stripe in minutes with our no-code MCP interface, letting agents operate seamlessly within your existing workflows.
- Deploy instantly – Deploy agents across your organization with one click, with auto-updates and shared access to keep teams aligned and expertise scalable.
- Explore marketplace – Discover a growing library of open-source, pre-built agents ready to drop into your workflow. See what other developers are building, or contribute your own to help the community move faster.
6️⃣ Code Completion – Speed up your coding with smart, real-time suggestions. Intelligent assistant understands the context to provide accurate, relevant completions that minimize errors and keep your workflow smooth.
7️⃣ Unit Test Generation – Generate and run detailed unit tests with our AI-powered system. Ensure your code is reliable, accurate, and of the highest quality.
8️⃣ Security treble – Zencoder is the only AI coding agent with SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001 & ISO 42001 certification.
Pricing
Zendocer offers a Free Plan, a Starter Plan (free for 2 weeks) that starts at $19 per user/month, a Core Plan starting at $49 per user/month, and an Advanced Plan starting at $119 per user/month.
2. GDB
GDB (GNU Project Debugger) is a powerful debugging tool that enables you to inspect and control the execution of programs written in various languages, including C, C++, Rust, and Ada. It supports features such as setting breakpoints, examining memory, modifying program state, and analyzing crashes, making it essential for tracking down and fixing bugs during software development.
Key Features:
1️⃣ Program launching with custom settings – Starts your program with specified arguments and environments, helping reproduce bugs under different conditions.
2️⃣ Conditional breakpoints – Stops program execution based on user-defined conditions, allowing targeted inspection of specific scenarios.
3️⃣ Real-time state inspection – Examines variables, memory, and call stacks when the program is paused, making it easier to trace the source of bugs.
4️⃣ Live program modification – Changes variables and memory during execution, enabling quick testing of fixes without restarting the program.
Pricing
GDB is open-source and completely free.
3. Testsigma
Testsigma is an AI-driven, no-code test automation platform that enables rapid creation, execution, debugging, and maintenance of tests across web, mobile, API, and desktop applications. Powered by autonomous AI agents, it streamlines the entire testing lifecycle, enhancing speed, coverage, and quality with real-time debugging, intelligent test planning, and codeless automation.
Key features:
1️⃣ Test case results – Provides step-level results with screenshots and videos, making it easier to pinpoint failures and speed up debugging.
2️⃣ Automatic bug reporting – Reports bugs from failed test cases, saving time and ensuring no issue goes untracked.
3️⃣ UI identifiers – Updates test scripts when UI changes, reducing test maintenance and debugging effort.
4️⃣ Execution results – Tracks trends across test runs, helping quickly identify flaky tests and recurring issues.
Pricing
Testigma varies based on your needs.
4. Visual Studio Code (VS Code)
Visual Studio Code (VS Code) is a free, extensible code editor that includes powerful AI features to assist with coding, debugging, and multi-step development tasks. It supports various programming languages, integrates with popular tools and services, and is customizable for any workflow or team environment.
Key Features:
1️⃣ Agent mode – Automates debugging by reading your codebase, running commands, and fixing compile or test failures in a continuous loop until the issue is resolved.
2️⃣ Run and debug – Enables you to run and debug code directly within the editor, streamlining the development process and reducing context switching.
3️⃣ Next edit suggestions – Predicts and recommends code changes based on your edits, helping you identify and fix issues faster.
4️⃣ Codebase awareness – Indexes your code locally and on GitHub to provide context-aware help, improving the accuracy and speed of debugging.
Pricing
Visual Studio Code is completely free with no subscription fees or license costs.
5. Sentry
Sentry is a monitoring and debugging platform that helps you identify, prioritize, and fix issues across your entire tech stack with tools like error tracking, performance tracing, session replay, and code coverage. Sentry delivers deep insights into crashes, slowdowns, and user frustrations, enabling you to ship better software faster.
Key Features:
1️⃣ Stacktrace with local variables – Captures detailed stack traces along with in-scope variable values to identify the exact line and cause of an error.
2️⃣ Breadcrumbs logging – Records a chronological trail of user actions and system events leading up to an error for enhanced debugging context.
3️⃣ User impact analysis – Surfaces the severity and reach of issues by correlating errors with affected users to prioritize debugging efforts.
4️⃣ Error alerts and frequency tracking – Sends real-time notifications and monitors error recurrence to quickly detect regressions and unstable code paths.
Pricing
Sentry offers a Free Plan, 2 Paid Plans starting at $29 per month, and an Enterprise Plan with custom pricing.
6. PyCharm
PyCharm is a powerful, AI-enhanced Python IDE that offers intelligent code completion, debugging, and seamless integration with tools like Jupyter, Git, and frameworks such as Django and FastAPI. With a powerful built-in debugger, real-time error detection, and AI-assisted code insights, it helps you identify, understand, and fix issues across complex codebases.
Key Features:
1️⃣ Visual debugging – Provides an intuitive graphical interface that simplifies debugging with clear inline variable values and step-through code execution.
2️⃣ Remote and container debugging – Supports debugging in Docker, virtual machines, and remote hosts via SSH for seamless development across environments.
3️⃣ Template debugging – Enables breakpoints in Django and Jinja2 templates to identify and resolve issues in dynamic web content.
4️⃣ Versatile breakpoints – Offers conditional breakpoints, log-only breakpoints, and exception-based stops for precise and efficient debugging control.
Pricing
PyCharm offers 3 Paid Plans for individuals starting at €9.90 per month.
For organizations, PyCharm also offers 3 Paid Plans starting at €20 per month.
7. IntelliJ IDEA
IntelliJ IDEA is a professional-grade IDE developed by JetBrains that boosts productivity in Java and Kotlin development through smart code assistance, advanced debugging tools, and integrated AI features. It supports the entire development lifecycle, from design to deployment, while offering robust features for web, cloud, and enterprise applications.
Key Features:
1️⃣ Debugger – Allows step-by-step code execution with breakpoints, expression evaluation, variable inspection, and real-time code flow analysis to detect and fix bugs efficiently.
2️⃣ Decompiler – Converts bytecode into readable Java code and enables debugging of third-party libraries even without source code access.
3️⃣ Profiler – Provides in-depth performance diagnostics with CPU and memory analysis, helping identify bottlenecks, threading issues, and inefficient code.
4️⃣ Problems tool window – Displays real-time code issues, including risky APIs and dependency problems, with quick-fix options and project-wide visibility for efficient troubleshooting.
Pricing
IntelliJ IDEA offers 2 Paid Plans for individuals starting at €16.90 per month.
For organizations, IntelliJ IDEA also offers 2 Paid Plans starting at €59.90 per month.
8. GitHub Copilot
GitHub Copilot is an AI coding assistant that helps you write, debug, test, and review code, now upgraded with 'agent mode' to automate complex tasks, such as refactoring and fixing issues. Supporting multiple AI models and platforms, it accelerates development through intelligent code suggestions, automated workflows, and deep project context.
Key Features:
1️⃣ Automated code review – Detects hidden bugs, logic errors, and code quality issues before human review to improve reliability and reduce debugging time.
2️⃣ Agent-powered code analysis – Analyzes entire codebases, proposes edits, runs tests, and validates fixes across multiple files to streamline large-scale debugging and refactoring.
3️⃣ Context-aware edit suggestions – Highlights the ripple effects of code changes across your project to ensure consistency and prevent new bugs from being introduced.
4️⃣ Interactive debugging guidance – Enables real-time collaboration through IDE comments and prompts, combining human insight with AI-driven suggestions for faster problem resolution.
Pricing
GitHub Copilot offers a Free Plan and 2 Paid Plans starting at $10 per month for individuals.
For businesses, GitHub Copilot offers 2 Paid Plans starting at $19 per month.
9. Fiddler
Fiddler offers a unified AI observability and security platform that helps you monitor, debug, and protect your LLMs and ML models to ensure reliable, compliant, and production-ready AI. With customizable guardrails and actionable diagnostics, Fiddler empowers you to detect, troubleshoot, and resolve issues such as model drift, prompt hacks, and silent failures before they impact business outcomes.
Key Features:
1️⃣ Explainable AI – Delivers local and global model explanations using techniques like SHAP and counterfactuals to uncover prediction logic and surface hidden issues.
2️⃣ Query and replay – Enables reproduction of past incidents by searching and replaying model behavior in context for thorough debugging.
3️⃣ Root cause analysis – Identifies key features driving model drift or performance issues through interactive diagnostic dashboards.
4️⃣ Real-time drift alerts – Detects and notifies on data and prediction drift, class imbalance, and anomalies to trigger immediate debugging workflows.
Pricing
Fiddler offers 3 Paid Plans with customizable pricing.
10. Raygun
Raygun is a performance and error monitoring platform that uses AI to deliver real-time debugging, crash reporting, and application performance insights across web and mobile apps. It helps engineering and CX teams reduce downtime, accelerate development, and boost user satisfaction with tools like AI Error Resolution, Real User Monitoring, and Application Performance Monitoring.
Key Features:
1️⃣ Stack trace clarity – Delivers clean, readable error traces with file paths and line numbers for faster issue identification.
2️⃣ Symbolication support – Converts raw memory addresses into human-readable function names and file locations for native crash clarity.
3️⃣ Source control insights – Integrates with Git platforms to show code diffs and context directly within error reports.
4️⃣ IDE-friendly stack copying – Offers formatted stack traces for quick navigation from Raygun into developer IDEs.
Pricing
Raygun offers different pricing plans for Crash Reporting, Real User Monitoring, and Application Performance Monitoring, with the lowest plan starting at $60 per month.
11. ReSharper
ReSharper is a powerful Visual Studio extension for .NET developers that enhances code navigation, refactoring, and analysis, significantly boosting productivity. Combined with enhanced code analysis and integration with profilers and coverage tools in dotUltimate, it supports more efficient debugging and performance tuning workflows.
Key Features:
1️⃣ Inline debugging – Displays variable values and function returns directly in the editor for faster code analysis during suspended execution.
2️⃣ Searchable DataTips – Enhances debugging tooltips with search functionality and persistent display for improved inspection of object values.
3️⃣ Breakpoint management – Enables quick navigation, filtering, grouping, and exporting of breakpoints for efficient debugging across large solutions.
4️⃣ PDB-free module debugging – Allows debugging of external modules by decompiling code and generating debug symbols automatically.
Pricing
ReSharper offers 3 Paid Plans for individuals starting at €13.90 per month.
For organizations, ReSharper also offers 3 Paid Plans starting at €34.90 per month.
12. Rookout
Rookout is a developer-first observability platform that enables real-time, live debugging in production and other environments without stopping the application or requiring code changes. It streamlines the debugging process across complex systems by allowing you to instantly collect data from running code and fix issues faster, without the need to reproduce bugs or redeploy.
Key Features:
1️⃣ Snapshot capture – Enables non-breaking breakpoints to instantly collect stack traces, variables, server metrics, and execution context without halting application flow.
2️⃣ Remote debugging – Allows debugging across any environment (dev, staging, production) without SSH access, redeployments, or attaching a debugger.
3️⃣ Real-time profiling – Offers flame graphs and performance insights for any function or code snippet without impacting runtime performance.
4️⃣ Dynamic observability – Generates logs, metrics, and traces on the fly from live debug sessions for seamless integration with observability and collaboration tools.
Pricing
Rookout doesn’t disclose any pricing information on its website.
To Wrap Things Up
Now that you know the 12 best debugging tools, it’s time to choose the ones that fit your workflow and start debugging smarter. Keep in mind that the right tool can save you countless hours and help you catch issues before they become costly problems. Zencoder can help you do just that by intelligently handling debugging and optimization across your entire codebase, so you can focus on building great software.
Sign up today to streamline your development process and take your productivity to the next level!
