Is Ruby on Rails Still Relevant?

Ruby on Rails is not hot, but it’s very relevant. In fact, it’s kind of having a renaissance. 

One could say that we’re biased. Two of our longest-running partnerships, Cooleaf and Seat Unique, revolve around Ruby on Rails. The “rail” in Monterail is a reference to the framework. We like it, true – but we’re not married to it.

Nonetheless, we keep our finger on the pulse, and we’ve been noticing a growing, renewed interest in Ruby on Rails within the industry. 

Is Ruby on Rails Growing in Popularity Again?

When you look at historical data from W3Techs’ analysis of millions of websites, you’ll notice an interesting thing:

Ruby’s popularity on the server has generally been growing since 2014, from 0.6% of websites to 6.3% as of June, 2025.

The Google Trends chart for Ruby on Rails might not scream “constant growth”. But it shows relatively stable interest in the framework, with a significant uptick in 2025.

Make no mistake – we’re far from Rails being the hottest framework in tech, 2007 isn’t coming back. It’s a mature technology with a unique set of advantages, which makes it a tantalizing choice for building a new product.

Are Companies Investing in Ruby on Rails?

Established tech leaders are doubling down on Rails. A significant indicator is the growing roster of companies joining the Rails Foundation, an organization dedicated to enhancing the framework's ecosystem. 

1Password is one of those companies. In an article from 2024 announcing the decision, Ryan St. James, VP of Product at 1Password and Founder of Kollide, said that Rails is where the future is. His arguments are hard to ignore:

“Kolide is a Rails application. And it’s not a tiny one. Beyond powering device trust for millions of authentications for innovative companies like Databricks, Discord, Anduril, Robinhood, Hugging Face, Asana, and many others, it serves thousands of web requests per second and processes billions of asynchronous jobs every month, all while boasting four nines (99.99%) of annual uptime every year since we began measuring it. [...] Our decision to use Rails is a way to express those values: speed of execution, focus, craftsmanship, and unceasing care for the customer.”

1Password views Rails as a "cheat code" for attracting top-tier engineering talent and fostering a culture of speed and craftsmanship.

In a more recent example, Chime Financial joined as a Contributing member on July 15, 2025. Chime, a financial technology leader with millions of active members, has leveraged Ruby on Rails since its inception for its ability to facilitate quick iteration and deliver a seamless user experience. Their long-standing commitment underscores Rails' capability to scale for millions of users while maintaining agility. 

Judge.me joined as a Core member on June 3, 2025. Founded in 2015, it’s a product reviews platform for which “Rails has always been the default choice.”

This kind of support validates Rails as a powerful, future-proof choice for digital products.

What Makes Ruby on Rails Attractive to Modern Development Teams?

Ruby on Rails' enduring appeal lies in its core tenets that prioritize developer productivity and happiness, directly impacting time-to-market and overall project success.

1. Developer Productivity and Happiness

Rails is renowned for its "convention over configuration" philosophy. 

In practice, it means fewer decisions to make when starting a project, allowing developers to focus on business logic rather than tooling and setup. 

The emphasis on developer experience leads to higher team morale and reduced burnout, a critical factor for long-term project success.

2. Time-to-Market Advantages

The framework's comprehensive nature, with built-in features like ActiveRecord for database interaction, ActionMailer for email, and ActionCable for WebSockets, provides a "batteries-included" experience. 

As a result, it reduces the need to integrate numerous third-party libraries, streamlining development and accelerating the launch of new features and products. 

For product owners, this means getting apps into users' hands faster, enabling quicker market validation.

3. The Rails Doctrine and Its Relevance Today

The principles embedded in Rails – such as favoring programmer happiness, optimizing for change, and the idea that the framework should get out of your way – are highly relevant in a competitive market that demands agility and continuous delivery. 

These philosophies foster a focused development environment where innovation thrives.

How Does Ruby on Rails Compare to Alternatives?

Development Speed

Rails' opinionated structure and rich ecosystem foster high development speed, particularly for data-driven web applications. This enables businesses to iterate rapidly and respond quickly to market demands. 

Engineer Philip I. Thomas, currently working at Chroma, took to his blog in early 2025 to explain why Ruby on Rails still matters:

“Developers choose Rails today because, 20 years later, it remains the most simple and abstracted way to build a web application. Solo developers can create dynamic, real-time web applications independently (as I did with Booklet and Postcard). Enterprise teams use it to build applications with multiple models and access controls, supported by thorough testing. Rails helps small teams work faster while reducing development and maintenance costs.”

Ecosystem Maturity and Stability

Rails offers stability. This "boring" stability, as some advocates put it, saves significant developer time that would otherwise be spent on complex upgrades, allowing teams to concentrate on core business value. 

The maturity of its libraries and tools means fewer surprises and a more predictable development cycle.

Performance Considerations

As one developer on HackerNews put it, “Rails is nobody's idea of a fast system. You can make it perform more than well enough, but fast it is not.”

Rails sacrifices performance by design. The focus is shifted from raw benchmark speeds to the efficiency of the development process and the stability of the deployed application. Plus, Rails continues to evolve, with ongoing performance improvements in each new release. 

Is Ruby on Rails Suitable for Vibe Coding?

According to GitHub engineer Sean Godecke, Rails has the potential to be a great choice for vibe coding.

He argues that Ruby, thanks to its brevity and elegance, stands out as a good candidate for LLM coding:

“The ideal language for LLMs is thus a language that uses as few tokens as possible per-feature, while still being readable. In other words, a language designed from the ground up for developer happiness. That’s Ruby! The entire point of the language is that you should be able to express your program as briefly and elegantly as possible, even if it costs more CPU cycles to run. Ruby on Rails has its own problems - to put it mildly - but the thing it does well is fitting a lot of features into a small amount of code. That’s exactly what LLMs need.”

So should you vibe code your next app in Ruby on Rails? Not necessarily, but Sean offers some food for thought regarding the potential future of Rails in combination with LLMs.

Is the Ruby on Rails Community Active?

In 2025, the Ruby on Rails community is vibrant and active, and it’s showing no signs of slowing down.

The increasing number of companies joining the Rails Foundation signifies robust industry backing and a shared commitment to the framework's future. 

As of the time of writing, the Rails GitHub repository has over 57,000 stars and almost 22,000 forks, signaling a healthy and active ecosystem.

Online forums like r/Rails and r/Ruby on Reddit continue to be active hubs for discussion, support, and knowledge sharing. 

Rails has been a common topic of discussion on HackerNews, with developers admitting that “Rails and Ruby are having a renaissance and the technical direction for both seems a good bet for the future.”

The launch of the 'On Rails' podcast, hosted by Robby Russell, shows that there’s interest in deeper conversations about how teams are successfully implementing Rails in real-world scenarios. 

Clearly, the Rails community stands strong, and there’s a big chance that it will continue to grow from 2025 onwards.

Should Startups Choose Ruby on Rails?

For startups, Ruby on Rails remains a compelling choice, offering a balanced mix of speed, stability, and scalability.

Pros for Startups

Its rapid prototyping capabilities allow early-stage companies to validate ideas and get products to market quickly. 

The "boring technology" aspect means startups can focus on their unique business problems rather than wrestling with tooling. It's excellent for getting a business operational quickly.

The extensive ecosystem of Ruby gems (libraries) significantly reduces development time for standard functionalities, allowing startups to build feature-rich applications with less effort.

Challenges for Startups

Depending on your base of operations, the hiring pool is probably smaller compared to more popular languages and frameworks. 

And a note on long-term scalability and technical debt. While Rails enables quick starts, long-time Rails developer and supporter Robbie Russel cautions against neglecting maintainability. 

Properly architected Rails applications can scale to enterprise levels, but early projects must prioritize clean code, documentation, and testing to avoid accumulating technical debt. 

Is Ruby on Rails enterprise-ready?

Absolutely. Ruby on Rails has consistently demonstrated its capability to support large-scale enterprise applications.

Pros for Enterprise

Companies like Shopify, Intercom, and GitHub are living proof of Rails' ability to handle massive traffic, millions of users, and complex operations. Ruby’s modular architecture allows for strategic scaling of specific services as needed.

For enterprises needing to quickly launch new products or iterate on existing ones, Rails' development speed is a significant advantage.

The maturity of the Rails ecosystem provides a solid foundation for complex enterprise-level development. This reduces risk and provides a predictable development environment.

Rails applications can be highly maintainable. Its convention-over-configuration approach promotes consistency across large codebases. Large teams can collaborate and onboard new developers smoothly. 

Challenges for Enterprise

Finding experienced Ruby on Rails developers at an enterprise scale can be challenging, but outsourcing Ruby on Rail development can be a good solution for this.

Rails’ performance limitations might be a crutch for use cases like compute-intensive, real-time analytics, or low-latency financial trading workloads. 

Should You Choose Ruby on Rails for Your Project?

Choosing the right technology stack is a strategic decision that has a direct impact on business outcomes.

In the past, we zoomed in on why Rails is ideal for E-commerce development. Now, a broader perspective.

Ruby on Rails is an excellent fit if your project demands:

• Rapid prototyping and iteration - you need to get an MVP to market quickly and iterate based on user feedback.

• Focus on business logic - you want your development team to concentrate on solving core business problems rather than infrastructure complexities.

• Maintainability and long-term stability - you're building an application intended for long-term growth and require a stable, well-supported framework that minimizes technical debt.

• Cost-effectiveness - you aim to achieve significant output with efficient team sizes, maximizing your development budget.

• Mature ecosystem - you value a rich set of libraries, established best practices, and a large, supportive community.

Rails Continues to be Relevant

The current renaissance of Rails is a testament to its enduring value in a rapidly evolving tech landscape.

If you're in the process of deciding on the technology for your next web application, consider Ruby on Rails. Given the right circumstances, it can be a smart choice that will give you efficiency, speed, and a solid foundation for sustainable growth.