Using <exclude> appears to be ignored by IDEA. If I have project A which has a dependency D, and B depends on A with an explicit exclusion of D, then IDEA still includes D as a dependency for B. In my case this causes a class clash in unit tests. <dependency> <artifactId>A</artifact> <excludes> <exclude>D</exclude> </excludes> </dependency> Unfortunately I'm not sure if IDEA itself supports the runtime non-export of dependencies to other modules. (the 'export' option seems to only apply to build-time)