The best ORMs, according to hackers
11 ORMs were recommended on Hacker News between November 2025 and November 2026. We rank them by how many separate people recommend each one, and 4 earn the Hacker Approved badge.
Top picks
The three most recommended ORMs with the badge. Each figure is 2 people. RecommendsCriticizes One comment
Full type safety and editor help
People recommend it for type-safe, editor-friendly queries, easy migrations and a clean API. Critics say it has rough edges with Bun and SQLite.
You keep writing your own SQL
Free .NET micro-ORM that maps hand-written SQL to objects with little fuss, valued for simplicity, few dependencies and speed. Critics find raw SQL and strings burdensome.
Powerful, extensible query API
Praised for a powerful, extensible query API and pragmatic design; critics say raw performance is not its strength and generated SQL is hard to control.
All 11 ORMs, ranked
Select a column heading to sort. Approval share is recommenders out of everyone who gave an opinion; the tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs. Months counts the months, out of 13, in which someone recommended it.
| Rank | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Entity Framework Core | 35 | 19 | 65% | 12 | — | — |
| 2 | SQLAlchemy | 33 | 28 | 54% | 11 | — | — |
| 3 | Drizzle ORM | 25 | 6 | 81% | 10 | — | Approved |
| 4 | Dapper | 19 | 3 | 86% | 7 | — | Approved |
| 5 | Oxyde ORM | 18 | 3 | 86% | 2 | — | — |
| 6 | Django ORM | 15 | 6 | 71% | 8 | — | Approved |
| 7 | Prisma ORM | 14 | 19 | 42% | 9 | — | — |
| Tied 8 | EF Core | 11 | 5 | 69% | 9 | — | Approved |
| Tied 8 | ActiveRecord | 11 | 7 | 61% | 5 | — | — |
| 10 | Diesel ORM | 6 | 2 | 75% | 4 | — | — |
| 11 | Toasty ORM | 5 | 1 | 83% | 3 | — | — |
How we rank
Rank is the number of separate people who recommend a product in a Hacker News comment over the past year. Someone who praises the same ORM in five threads counts once.
The badge goes to ORMs that at least 10 people recommend, with recommenders outnumbering critics at least 2 to 1, recommended in at least 4 of the 13 months.
Rankings are never for sale. We may earn a commission when you buy through our links. It never changes the order.