# Ionic Framework

5 Hacker News commenters recommended Ionic Framework and 2 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Open source, actively maintained, and a happy middle ground for cross-platform apps. Its main caveat is a dated look, still on Material v2.

## Why people recommend it

- Open source and actively maintained (1 comments): "Ionic Framework and Capacitor aren't affected and remain open source and are actively maintained by the team." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49876904))
- Least pain among cross-platform stacks (1 comments): "I had the least pain from the ionic stack which I guess is a happy middle ground" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45870035))
- Recommended as the way to go (1 comments): "Ionic (or the Cupertino package in Flutter) is the way to go." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45859854))

## What people warn about

- Dated, still on Material v2 (1 comments): "it’s a bit dated (still on Material v2)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49282791))
- No ad blocking support (1 comments): "Ionic doesn't support ad blocking abilities." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47070429))
- Seen as used when alternatives are poor (1 comments): "It was a lot like Ionic: something you used when you had a captive user-base that literally couldn't pick a better product." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46490011))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Qt](https://hackerapproved.com/p/qt.md): 191 recommend
- [GTK](https://hackerapproved.com/p/gtk.md): 85 recommend
- [Windows Forms](https://hackerapproved.com/p/winforms.md): 76 recommend
- [SwiftUI](https://hackerapproved.com/p/swiftui.md): 75 recommend
- [Tcl/Tk](https://hackerapproved.com/p/tcl-tk.md): 61 recommend

## Cite as

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