Ok, you’ve decided to go with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. That’s great! But, which edition? Have no fear, the Visual Studio 2010 Edition Comparison is here! This guide will help you compare visual studio editions by providing you with a simple, easy-to-follow outline of the different versions to help you make an informed decision.

Microsoft broke up Visual Studio 2010 into four editions: Test Professional, Professional, Premium, and Ultimate. Test Professional is designed specifically to simplify test planning and manual test execution. Great for QA teams, not so much for developers. With Visual Studio 2010 Pro, Premium, and Ultimate, each builds upon itself and includes more features than the last; giving you, the programmer, the toolset you need for each project. Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate contains not only all the development tools, but also has all the testing features found in Test Pro 2010. A complete breakdown and comparison of each edition and what it can do is listed below.

Visual Studio 2010 Comparison	Ultimate	Premium	Professional	Test Professional
SoftwareMedia Price	$3550.99	$5237.39	$1099.99	$2277.00
InelliTrace (Historical Debugger)
Static Code Analysis
Code Metrics
Profiling
Testing
Unit Testing
Code Coverage
Test Impact Analysis
Coded UI Test
Web Performance
Load Testing
Microsoft Test Manager 2010
Test Case Management
Manual Test Execution
Manual Test Record & Playback
Lab Management Configuration
Database Development
Database Deployment
Database Change Management
Database Unit Testing
Database Test Data Generation
Development Platform Support
Windows Development
Web Development
Office and Sharepoint Development
Cloud Development
Customize Development Experience
Architecture and Modeling
Architecture Explorer
UML® 2.0 Compliant Diagrams (Activity, Use Case, Sequence, Class, Component)
Layer Diagram and Dependency Validation
Read-only diagrams (UML, Layer, DGML Graphics)
Lab Management
Virtual environment setup & tear down
Provision environment from template
Checkpoint environment
Team Foundation Server
Version Control
Work Item Tracking
Build Automation
Team Portal
Reporting & Business Intelligence
Agile Planning Workbook
Test Case Management
Microsoft Visual Studio Team Explorer
MSDN Subscription - Software for Production Use
Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010
Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 CAL	1	1	1	1
Microsoft Ex[pression Studio 3
Microsoft Office 2007, Ultimate, Communicator 2007, Project 2007, Standard, Visio 2007 Professional, SharePoint Designer 2007
MSDN Subscription - Software for Development and Test Use
Windows Azure
Windows (client and server operating systems)
Microsoft SQL Server
Toolkits Software Development Kits, Driver Development Kits
Microsoft SharePoint
Microsoft Dynamics
All other Servers
Windows Embedded operating systems
MSDN Subscription Benefits
Teamprise-based Technology
Technical Support Inceidents	4	4	2	2
Priority support in MSDN forums
Microsoft e-learning collections	2	2	1	1
MSDN Magazine
MSDN Flash Newsletter
MSDN Online Concierge