# Entity Framework Core

35 Hacker News commenters recommended Entity Framework Core and 19 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Recommended for C# database work with LINQ, strong typing and little effort on common queries. Main caveat: generated SQL can be slow or strange, and implicit behavior needs watching.

## Why people recommend it

- Boosts developer productivity (4 comments): "my productivity has increased substantially since I tried EF for C# and Drizzle for TS" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45802671)) "Massive productivity boost, and LINQ rivals SQL itself" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46360976)) "it vastly increases productivity and reduces bugs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47111210))
- Strong typing and LINQ integration (4 comments): "EF is solid and proven. Easy, low-lift type safety end-to-end from DB up with very good perf." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48108460)) "nothing right now compares to the power and DX of EF Core + Linq methods" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46783382)) "LINQ plays well with the same static analysis tools as the rest of C#." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45913915))
- Handles common cases with little effort (3 comments): "EF makes the 90% use case easy and the 10% case possible with very little pain." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46849812)) "EF Core is amazing -- in it's default setup it works for 99% of situation." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45906166)) "It's trivial to make efficient projected queries with ORMs like EF." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45803866))
- Works with many databases (3 comments): "EFCore is still the best ORM I've ever used, with full support for SQLite, Postgres, MySql, etc." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48106523)) "These days I just use EF with Sqlite on 99% of my projects." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49737627)) "EF works fine with SQLite for a project I work on." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49737547))

## What people warn about

- Slow or strange generated SQL (4 comments): "EF Core is so easy to turn into a disgrace for performance, developer experience, AND build times" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49362750)) "This mostly works, until it doesn't, or it does but has strange generated sql and performance." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45909372)) "creating some strange predicates in SQL that end up being unable to seek into string indexes" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47282712))
- Couples app tightly to the ORM (3 comments): "eventually you wind up building your project in Entity Framework just as much as in C#" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45916892)) "you’re writing your app in Entity Framework as much as you are writing it in C#" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45969828)) "ended up being a tightly coupled mess from IQueryable being passed around" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46360035))
- Hidden magic causes surprises (3 comments): "I like the tighter code, but you definitely do need to keep your eye on the "magic" of EF" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46055277)) "I found it completely illogical for my ORM to maintain state." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45904735)) "EF seems to be the easiest way to shoot yourself in the foot" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48882084))
- Poor support for provider-specific features (2 comments): "It supports bfloat16 but... the SQL client doesn't! Or Entity Framework." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47433345)) "ORMs simply cannot cope with provider specific requirements" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49017474))

## Alternatives hackers 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
- [Django ORM](https://hackerapproved.com/p/django-orm.md): 15 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Entity Framework Core", https://hackerapproved.com/p/entity-framework-core/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).