Is Rails Dead in 2025? Absolutely Not.

TL;DR

• Rails isn’t dead, it’s mature.
• Still powers hundreds of thousands of apps (GitHub, Shopify, etc.).
• The job market is smaller but lucrative for specialists.
• If you value productivity and stability, Rails remains a top choice.

Introduction

Every few years, the same headline makes the rounds: “Is Rails dead?”

It’s a familiar cycle in tech. Frameworks drift out of the hype spotlight and skeptics assume they’re irrelevant. Rails, in particular, has been declared dead more times than most developers can count.

But here’s the reality: Rails is not dead. It has matured. It’s stable, widely adopted, and continuously improved by a dedicated community and by major companies that depend on it.

Just look at the facts: Rails 8.1 beta was just announced, adding new features and refinements. Meanwhile, Ruby 3.4 delivered big performance wins with a faster YJIT and the Prism parser. Rails might not be the flashiest tool anymore, but in 2025 it remains one of the most productive, battle-tested ways to build web applications.

My personal experience

I didn’t so much choose Rails as I grew up with it. My third-year university internship dropped me into Rails 1.2, and I never looked back. Early on, I stuck to conventions and the “Rails way,” then later pushed into modular architectures (see Modular Rails). Along the way I lived in the ecosystem staples: Sidekiq, Postgres, Redis.

As the industry shifted, so did Rails apps. They weren’t monolithic front-to-back systems anymore, but Rails APIs powering React frontends. That evolution became the backbone of my book Master Ruby Web APIs.

For a few years after, my focus tilted toward JavaScript in all its forms. But in 2025, Rails came back in force: two major consulting projects, both Rails-heavy. My days now are spent on upgrades, performance tuning, integrations, and compliance — the kind of business-moving engineering Rails excels at.

The takeaway? There’s still a lot of Rails out there. It may not be the easiest entry point for juniors, but for building durable products quickly — or for mid-career developers who want impact over novelty — Rails remains a very smart bet.

Why Rails Still Matters in 2025

Rails endures because it nails the fundamentals better than most alternatives.

1. Convention over configuration. Fewer decisions, less bikeshedding, faster shipping. Teams stay focused on product, not setup.
2. An ecosystem that covers the basics. Need authentication, payments, background jobs, storage, or an admin dashboard? Rails has proven gems for all of it. Batteries-included saves months.
3. Backed by giants. Shopify keeps squeezing more performance out of Rails. GitHub continues to refine a massive monolith at internet scale. Their investments lift the entire community.
4. Security built in. CSRF protection, strong parameter handling, prepared statements — Rails has been hardened by two decades of real-world scrutiny.
5. Predictable upgrades. Rails values smooth, incremental updates over disruptive rewrites. That means products last, teams stay stable, and technical debt is easier to manage.

In a world obsessed with chasing novelty, Rails wins by being steady, pragmatic, and relentlessly focused on productivity.

Adoption & Ecosystem

One of the strongest counters to the “Rails is dead” myth is adoption. Rails isn’t a relic, it powers a huge portion of the modern web.

• Developer usage: About 6% of developers actively use Rails, according to the Stack Overflow Survey 2025. That may sound small next to JavaScript’s dominance, but 6% of millions is still a massive community. Even more telling: 46% admire Rails, showing it has more respect than raw usage implies.
• Production footprint: BuiltWith tracks over 527,000 live sites on Rails today. That’s not niche; that’s infrastructure.
• Enterprise trust: Heavyweights like GitHub, GitLab, and Shopify continue to run massive applications on Rails. They could rewrite in anything. They stick with Rails because it delivers.
• New adoption: Rails isn’t merely coasting on legacy. Thoughtbot recently highlighted 60+ companies launching new Rails projects in 2025, from startups to established businesses.

Rails today feels less like a fad and more like infrastructure: not loud, not trendy, but indispensable.

The Job Market & Salaries

Rails roles are fewer than in JavaScript, Java, or Python ecosystems. That’s reality — and it makes entry-level opportunities harder to come by.

But the picture shifts as you gain experience. Companies running Rails depend on it for revenue-critical systems. They don’t just want Rails developers; they need them. And they pay accordingly. According to Salary.com, U.S. Rails developers average $114k–$127k, competitive with other top stacks. Senior and specialized roles often climb well beyond that.

Scarcity works both ways: fewer openings overall, but also fewer qualified candidates per opening. Many Rails shops are long-lived businesses, not short-lived experiments. That means steady work, meaningful problems, and a chance to become indispensable.

Think of the Cobol Cowboys. Almost no one learns COBOL today, yet whole industries run on it, and specialists earn a premium. Rails isn’t COBOL, but the lesson holds: niche technologies with staying power reward those who commit.

Rails may not be the biggest market, but it’s a lucrative one for developers who lean in and build depth.

When Rails Is the Right Choice (A Quick Checklist)

Choose Rails when you need to:

• Ship authenticated, data-heavy products fast with complex domain logic.
• Support long-lived, maintainable codebases with predictable upgrades.
• Build multi-tenant or back-office apps with strong CRUD and workflow needs.
• Rely on mature security and an established hosting/runtime story.
• Keep a small team highly productive without constant tool churn.

When Rails Might Not Be the Right Choice

Rails isn’t universal. Consider other tools if:

• You’re a beginner chasing your first role. Rails is fantastic for fundamentals, but there are more entry-level openings in TypeScript/Java ecosystems.
• You’re building a frontend-first SPA. If the app is primarily complex client-side UI, frameworks like Next.js/Nuxt/Remix may fit better. Rails can serve the API, but if the backend is thin, its advantages diminish.
• You need exotic edge compute or specialized realtime at massive scale. Rails can do realtime (Action Cable/AnyCable) and scale horizontally, but certain niches may fit better elsewhere.

Future Outlook

Rails isn’t just standing still. Rails 8 brings Hotwire refinements, stronger multi-database support, and performance work that benefits every app. Shopify and GitHub continue to invest in tooling and optimizations at scale, feeding improvements back to the community. Rails in 2030 won’t look exactly like Rails in 2010 — but the same principles will carry it forward.

Conclusion

So, is Rails dead in 2025? Absolutely not.

Rails has matured into what every enduring technology eventually becomes: boring. And in software, boring is a superpower.

Boring means upgrades don’t derail your product. Boring means your engineers focus on features, not endless infrastructure churn. Boring means your business can rely on systems that last years, not just hype cycles.

Rails doesn’t dominate headlines anymore — it dominates where it matters: production. Shopify, GitHub, GitLab, and hundreds of thousands of others prove it daily. Rails is the framework you choose when you want to ship fast, scale pragmatically, and sleep at night knowing your foundation is stable.

Rails isn’t dead. It’s thriving, battle-tested, and here for the long haul.