If you plan to be a professional software engineer, then I recommend just paying for the best tools. The price of one hour of an engineer's salary (give or take) can pay for the entire IntelliJ suite for a year.
The definition of "best" is often subjective and may boil down to familiarity.
On the other hand, betting on open-source tooling may be a good way to increase the chances that your "best" tools will still be available in the future.
And you don't need to continue your subscription unless you want continued updates. My PyCharm 'subscription' lapsed around two years ago, and I'm only planning on purchasing a new fallback license for the upcoming 2020.3 release because their excellent vim-mode plugin finally supports jump lists, but requires a newer version than the one I originally paid for - and I'm honestly happy to pay them again.
And they allow one to use the personal license at work, so long as no one at home is simultaneously using that license (I'm paraphrasing, and also cognizant that "at work" and "at home" now mean something radically different than this time last year) : https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207240855-Can-... (going up one level has all kind of interesting other licensing FAQs)
I actually still do that even though work bought me an IJ license because my personal _suite_ license covers more tools
On the other hand, betting on open-source tooling may be a good way to increase the chances that your "best" tools will still be available in the future.