Rails Alternatives

Welcome to the Rails Alternatives list - a curated guide to frameworks for those that have lived in the Rails world for a while but want to branch off.

Rails is great and all - but branching off is never a bad thing. Many other web frameworks exist, but for those that truly enjoy the Rails way, this list will provide other frameworks that are similar in nature.

Most Starred Framework on Rails Alternatives:

🥇 Django

🥈 Laravel

🥉 Spring Boot

DISCLAIMER

This guide is in no way meant to convince you of using any one framework - nor is it meant to convince you to not use frameworks that isn't listed here. It is simply meant to offer a list of alternative web frameworks similar in nature to Rails for anyone who's interested in trying them. What you learn is your choice.

There are some frameworks not listed here that some would argue are Rails-like, but were not added because they are not standalone and require a larger framework to work.

Frameworks

C# / F#

Name	⭐ Stars	Learning	Notes
ASP.NET Core	35.4k	Guides Screencasts	Easy to confuse with ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET Web API (Both now succeeded by Core)

Clojure

Name	⭐ Stars	Learning	Notes
Kit	483	Docs

Crystal

Name	⭐ Stars	Learning	Notes
Lucky	2.6k	Guides Screencasts

Elixir

Name	⭐ Stars	Learning	Notes
Phoenix	21.4k	Guides Screencasts Examples

F#

Name	⭐ Stars	Learning	Notes
Saturn	714	Docs

Go

Name	⭐ Stars	Learning	Notes
Revel	13.2k	Docs Quickstart Examples

Java / JVM-based

Name	⭐ Stars	Learning	Notes
Spring Boot	75.1k	Docs Guides Quickstart	Easy to confuse with Spring Framework (Which is the core, but Boot takes the "just works" approach). Supports Java, Kotlin and Groovy
Play	12.6k	Docs Quickstart	Supports Java and Scala

JavaScript / TypeScript

Name	⭐ Stars	Learning	Notes
Adonis	16.9k	Docs Screencasts
Sails	22.8k	Docs Guides

Perl

Name	⭐ Stars	Learning	Notes
Catalyst	265	Docs

PHP

Name	⭐ Stars	Learning	Notes
CakePHP	8.7k	Docs Screencasts
CodeIgniter	5.4k	Docs
Laravel	78.7k	Docs Quickstart Screencasts

Python

Name	⭐ Stars	Learning	Notes
Django	80.2k	Docs Lecture
Masonite	2.2k	Docs Quickstart

Ruby

Name	⭐ Stars	Learning	Notes
Ruby on Rails	56k	Guides Screencasts	We can't leave out the OG, can we?

Rust

Name	⭐ Stars	Learning	Notes
Loco	5.2k	Docs Examples Screencasts

Swift

Name	⭐ Stars	Learning	Notes
Vapor	24.5k	Docs