Phoenix LiveView
Hacker ApprovedRanked 7 of 63 web frameworks by recommenders
Recommended for interactive pages without a separate JavaScript frontend. Critics note server-held state limits concurrent sessions, and complex features still need JavaScript hooks.
Recommended for interactive pages without a separate JavaScript frontend. Critics note server-held state limits concurrent sessions, and complex features still need JavaScript hooks.
68 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 58
- criticize it
- 10
- approval share
- 85%
Recommended in 12 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 58 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 5.8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 12 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Enjoyable, productive programming model
“Elixir + Phoenix LiveView is the only "new" thing that has excited me in the past decade”
Comment from 1 Jan 2026 in “If childhood is half of subjective life, how should that change how we live?” “the more I learned, the more I was impressed by the efficiency and the programming model”
Comment from 12 Aug 2026 in “HTML over WebSockets: real-time SPAs with barely any JavaScript” “Unit test runs are fast, and testing LiveView is overall more pleasant and effective”
Comment from 5 Jun 2026 in “Elixir v1.20 released: now a gradually typed language” - Comment from 4 Jan 2026 in “Web development is fun again”
- Comment from 4 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: Craftplan – I built my wife a production management tool for her bakery”
- Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (December 2025)”
Real-time interactivity for internal tools
“LiveView particularly shines for internal tools like this where you want the interactivity”
Comment from 4 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: Craftplan – I built my wife a production management tool for her bakery” “the out-of-the-box live UI with Phoenix/LiveView that was really appealing”
Comment from 23 Jul 2026 in “Hologram works. Elixir runs in the browser” “killer tool for the sorts of apps or tools I'm likely to build”
Comment from 16 May 2026 in “Erlang/OTP 29.0” - Comment from 1 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: Check Your AI Human Review API for AI Generated Content”
- Comment from 4 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: Craftplan – I built my wife a production management tool for her bakery”
Fast, sends less data
“We've improved throughput on new features by about 2x and sentry errors are down.”
Comment from 14 Jun 2026 in “Phoenix LiveView 1.2 Released” “LiveView can send less data than a JSON API, and the client has less work to do.”
Comment from 13 Aug 2026 in “HTML over WebSockets: real-time SPAs with barely any JavaScript” “Its architecture is explained in the documentation, that's why it's so fast!”
Comment from 31 Dec 2025 in “Doom in Django: testing the limits of LiveView at 600.000 divs/segundo” - Comment from 15 Jul 2026 in “How I use HTMX with Go”
Skips separate frontend framework
“Phoenix with LiveView bypassing the need for a separate frontend framework is also a huge win”
Comment from 25 Sep 2026 in “Rails World 2026 Opening Keynote [video]” “migrate off of the Next.js and other JS SSR rats nets to Elixir and Phoenix LiveView”
Comment from 24 Feb 2026 in “How we rebuilt Next.js with AI in one week” “you’re able to completely forgo the need for a frontend framework”
Comment from 31 Oct 2026 in “AI isn't replacing SREs, it's deskilling them”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Server state limits concurrency
“since the liveview state is on the server side it means that one server can't support a large number of concurrent sessions”
Comment from 16 May 2026 in “Erlang/OTP 29.0” “its much much easier to account for this with regular HTTP handlers in other stacks though”
Comment from 4 Jun 2026 in “Elixir v1.20 released: now a gradually typed language” Client and server state get messy
“have you actually tried mutating state on both client and server? I have with Phoenix and it sucks.”
Comment from 12 Dec 2025 in “Denial of service and source code exposure in React Server Components” “yes it is convenient, but on the other it could become a huge mess”
Comment from 14 Jun 2026 in “Phoenix LiveView 1.2 Released” Websocket spam and security gaps
“how easily you can hijack the websocket and just spam random commands to your server”
Comment from 3 Jun 2026 in “Elixir v1.20 released: now a gradually typed language” “with liveview there are almost no resources on how to build a view securely”
Comment from 3 Jun 2026 in “Elixir v1.20 released: now a gradually typed language”
Other web frameworks people recommend
The four most recommended other web frameworks, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ruby on Rails | 337 | 145 | 70% | 12 | 14 yrs38 owners | Approved |
| Django | 277 | 97 | 74% | 12 | 15 yrs38 owners | Approved |
| Next.js | 127 | 256 | 33% | 12 | 3 yrs6 owners | — |
| Phoenix Framework | 85 | 11 | 89% | 12 | 8 yrs7 owners | Approved |
| Phoenix LiveViewThis page | 58 | 10 | 85% | 12 | — | Approved |
What people said
40 of the 81 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“you’re able to completely forgo the need for a frontend framework”
“Phoenix with LiveView bypassing the need for a separate frontend framework is also a huge win”
“The things that look great are LiveView and getting rid of boilerplate”
“more tools available today like hotwire/turbo, liveview, etc. to make it easier”
“LiveView can send less data than a JSON API, and the client has less work to do.”
“the more I learned, the more I was impressed by the efficiency and the programming model”
“the out-of-the-box live UI with Phoenix/LiveView that was really appealing”
“I also love Phoenix LiveView and have a couple of side-projects running on it.”
“Phoenix Liveview, HTMX are all vastly faster and easier to maintain”
“seeing how Lustre does HTML templating versus how Phoenix does Heex was my deciding factor to try the latter”
“I got charmed by this path with LiveView and Hotwire back in the day.”
“Super happy to have it incorporated into mainline live view”
“We've improved throughput on new features by about 2x and sentry errors are down.”
“it’s compiled (including the html template), so the LLM get instant feedback if something is off”
“I quite like the colocated JS. I much prefer to define a components "hook" code inside the component.”
“I recommend this approach for websites that are not very complex.”
“yes it is convenient, but on the other it could become a huge mess”
“Just so quick and easy, and the LLM seems to get things right quite often.”
“Unit test runs are fast, and testing LiveView is overall more pleasant and effective”
“Phoenix will wire up the form to the changesets by default.”
“its much much easier to account for this with regular HTTP handlers in other stacks though”
“with liveview there are almost no resources on how to build a view securely”
“how easily you can hijack the websocket and just spam random commands to your server”
“since the liveview state is on the server side it means that one server can't support a large number of concurrent sessions”
“killer tool for the sorts of apps or tools I'm likely to build”
“what really sold it, was LiveView from the Phoenix framework”
“when I have to do something moderately complicated I have to reach out for a darn js library and hooks and phx-commands”
“migrate off of the Next.js and other JS SSR rats nets to Elixir and Phoenix LiveView”
“the component story has gotten a lot better than when I tried back in pre-1.0 days”
“LiveView is amazing, not just for internal tools”
“LiveView particularly shines for internal tools like this where you want the interactivity”
“Elixir + Ash + LiveView is the best productive combination”
“LiveView made the real-time review dashboard easy”
“HTMX, Hotwire/Turbo, LiveView are just so much saner to me.”
“I've found programming (in Elixir) Phoenix and LiveView great fun over the years.”
“Elixir + Phoenix LiveView is the only "new" thing that has excited me in the past decade”
“Its architecture is explained in the documentation, that's why it's so fast!”
“using Elixir/Phoenix/LiveView and loving the experience”
“The idea of Blazor Server or Phoenix live view is "the server runs the show".”
“have you actually tried mutating state on both client and server? I have with Phoenix and it sucks.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.