# ActiveRecord

11 Hacker News commenters recommended ActiveRecord and 7 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 5 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Recommended for ergonomic database queries and low coupling in Rails apps, with batteries-included functionality. Critics call ORMs an anti-pattern and cite excess joins and many database calls.

## Why people recommend it

- Ergonomic querying, easy to use (4 comments): "Rspec and ActiveRecord and to a lesser extent Bundler and Rake are still the most ergonomic versions of tools in their class" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46116128)) "ActiveRecord is the yardstick by which I measure the ergonomics of all other ORMs in other languages" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46111642)) "fantastic solutions to 99% of cases of querying for things efficiently" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47468419))
- Batteries-included admin pages and features (2 comments): "the extra capabilities you get from an ActiveRecord framework such as full-stack admin pages" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48798855)) "it gave us so much batteries included functionality" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46179506))
- Established conventions and low coupling (2 comments): "They don't have the established conventions around _id fields, polymorphism, the nice bits around joins" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48793369)) "What seals it for me is the low coupling it imposes on entities." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47692032))
- Covers most querying without raw SQL (2 comments): "fantastic solutions to 99% of cases of querying for things efficiently" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47468419)) "I haven't written any raw SQL (only Active Record) in about two years" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48786872))

## What people warn about

- Excess database calls and joins (3 comments): "making 1,400 database calls via ActiveRecord to render a ten item to-do list" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47519869)) "ActiveRecord does have the problem of excess joins though." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48787584)) "the performance hit you get with ORMs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46097005))
- ORM design seen as anti-pattern (3 comments): "ORMs and ActiveRecord are an obvious and well documented anti-pattern at this point in time" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49289662)) "Being able to write `user.save()` is such a lunacy" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48157590)) "I always disliked ActiveRecord" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48786775))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Entity Framework Core](https://hackerapproved.com/p/entity-framework-core.md): 35 recommend
- [SQLAlchemy](https://hackerapproved.com/p/sqlalchemy.md): 33 recommend
- [Drizzle ORM](https://hackerapproved.com/p/drizzle-orm.md): 25 recommend
- [Dapper](https://hackerapproved.com/p/dapper.md): 19 recommend
- [Oxyde ORM](https://hackerapproved.com/p/oxyde.md): 18 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "ActiveRecord", https://hackerapproved.com/p/activerecord/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).