It's really awesome how Phoenix has come a really long way in a really short period of time. Chris and José (and many others) do an excellent job of carefully considering features and how those features get implemented. While many refer to Phoenix as a "web framework" I don't think of it that way in the traditional sense of web frameworks like Rails. I find it closer to a "web library" that does an excellent job of handling Web concerns such as routing, WebSockets, rendering HTML/JSON and internationalization. I think this is a good thing in this day and age of having very diverse model layers.
If you have time and want to see a very well run open source project in action, I recommend you read through present and past discussions on the Phoenix GitHub project: https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix/issues
In Phoenix – Elixir Web Frameworkphoenixframework
phoenix
Elixir2014–2026
phoenixframework / phoenix
phoenix
Peace of mind from prototype to production
39Distinct people
45Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
23.2KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Peace of mind from prototype to production
GitHub
Where it is used
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What people are saying
It's really awesome how Phoenix has come a really long way in a really short period of time. Chris and José (and many others) do an excellent job of carefully considering…
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Also in these discussions
- elixir-ecto/ecto · linked in 4 of the same discussions
- elixir-lang/elixir · linked in 3 of the same discussions
Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 6:01:08 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year45 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2014-06-23 16:37:03 UTC to 2026-06-04 10:08:44 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 7 | 1 | 6 |
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 0 | 6 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 2 | 2 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 1 | 3 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 1 | 3 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 0 | 6 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
Peace of mind from prototype to production.
Getting started
See the official site at https://www.phoenixframework.org/.
Install the latest version of Phoenix by following the instructions at https://phoenix.hexdocs.pm/installation.html#phoenix.
Documentation
API documentation is available at https://phoenix.hexdocs.pm.
Phoenix.js documentation is available at https://phoenix.hexdocs.pm/js.
Contributing
We appreciate any contribution to Phoenix. Check our CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md and CONTRIBUTING.md guides for more information. We usually keep a list of features and bugs in the issue tracker.
Generating a Phoenix project from unreleased versions
You can create a new project using the latest Phoenix source installer (the phx.new Mix task) with the following steps:
Remove any previously installed phx_new archives so that Mix will pick up the local source code. This can be done with mix archive.uninstall phx_new or by simply deleting the file, which is usually in ~/.mix/archives/.
Copy this repo via git clone https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix or by downloading it
Run the phx.new Mix task from within the installer directory, for example:
cd phoenix/installer
mix phx.new dev_app --dev
The --dev flag will configure your new project's :phoenix dep as a relative path dependency, pointing to your local Phoenix checkout:
defp deps do
[{:phoenix, path: "../..", override: true},
To create projects outside of the installer/ directory, add the latest archive to your machine by following the instructions in installer/README.md
Building from source
To build the documentation:
MIX_ENV=docs mix docs
To build Phoenix:
mix deps.get
mix compile
To build the Phoenix installer:
mix deps.get
mix compile
mix archive.build
To build Phoenix.js:
mix assets.build
Important links
#elixir on Libera IRC
elixir-lang Slack channel
Issues tracker
Phoenix Forum (questions and proposals)
Visit Phoenix's sponsor, DockYard, for expert Phoenix Consulting
Copyright and License
Copyright (c) 2014, Chris McCord.
Phoenix source code is licensed under the MIT License.
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
7 sourcesPhoenix – Elixir Web Framework
273 points · Open discussionhttps://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix
Another rising technology with a similar name. This phoenix is set to be the Rails for Elixir
In Introducing Phoenix, Swift set freeWe're working on Phoenix, a highly connected web framework that aims to serve as a backend for all devices, whether your web browser, native mobile client, or smart oven.
https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix
http://www.confreaks.com/videos/4132-elixirconf2014-rise-of-...
In Elixir v1.0.0 releasedI was primarily a Ruby programmer so before I dove into Elixir I mostly wrote Sinatra and Rails apps, and occasionally some Node.js. When I first came to Elixir I mostly approached it as a fun thing to do in my spare time. The language really has some great features for solving problems in concise ways. But as I've spent more and more time with the language I've started to realize it can replace far more of the projects that I used to use Ruby for than I first though.
I've worked on a couple projects in Elixir already. I do still like Ruby/Rails for rendering HTML (there's years of hard work in making that an easy thing to do in Rails), so a common web app that I create lately will be Rails as a very thing wrapper around the database for rendering HTML and then an Elixir component for background jobs and WebSockets.
That said, a ton of gr
Read the rest
eat work is going into Phoenix[0] and I think it's very close to being suitable for both rendering HTML and WebSockets. On my next project I'll probably try and just use Phoenix entirely.
0 - https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix
I come from a javascript/python background, you might want to take a look at the Phoenix web framework[1], as it will give you a good introduction into the language, but also introduce some new concepts (OTP-wise) that will help you think more "elixir-y" (or "erlang-y").
One thing I constantly keep in mind when programming in Elixir is that, using it in the same way you would use Python is a waste. For example, when I use Python, I'm not typically thinking of concurrency (outside of, "how many gunicorn workers will I need?"), because of the situation with concurrency in Python. Using Elixir (or Erlang), you really aren't taking full advantage of the language/runtime/VM if you don't take concurrency into account. If all you want to do is a little string munging, you can do it in Elixir, but it is probably not the best tool for the job.
The
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Mix & OTP guides available on elixir-lang.org are great, but if you want more information on OTP, the OTP chapters in "Learn you some Erlang"[2] are wonderful. You will have to do some translation from Erlang syntax to Elixir, but it is a great way to learn how to think concurrency.
1: https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix
2: http://learnyousomeerlang.com/content
We're working on full-featured Elixir web framework:
https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix
> Also I really have no interest in learning a language just to write yet another website in.
It depends on what you mean by website and what your goals are. What Erlang/Elixir provide is distribution, fault tolerance, and concurrency in the most straight forward way I've experienced coming from any other language. If you're making brochure sites, it's not a compelling cost tradeoff, but if your target is a highly concurrent, fault tolerant service that can be easily distributed across 100s of servers, then it's going to be much harder to find an alternative. Elixir 1.0 should be out later this summer. It should be a smoother ride after that.
In Why Not Erlang? The Lack of Onramps