# Hotwire Turbo

22 Hacker News commenters recommended Hotwire Turbo and 6 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 7 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Gives SPA-style page updates from server-rendered HTML with little JavaScript. Critics find it more opinionated than HTMX and note it lacks signals.

## Why people recommend it

- SPA feel without heavy JavaScript (4 comments): "This leads to writing expressive dead simple code, that is so simple to understand yet behaves like a modern SPA" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47268523)) "Hotwire/Turbo is genuinely good - it gives you SPA-like interactivity without the JavaScript framework tax." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47367103)) "I quite enjoy not using JS heavy frontends in Rails by leaning on Turbo" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47145415))
- Server-rendered HTML over the wire (4 comments): "For simple forms personally I find the server-by-default solution of https://turbo.hotwired.dev/ to be far better" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46240611)) "more tools available today like hotwire/turbo, liveview, etc. to make it easier" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49286293)) "HTMX, Hotwire/Turbo, LiveView are just so much saner to me." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46587606))
- Simple and easy to use (4 comments): "This leads to writing expressive dead simple code, that is so simple to understand yet behaves like a modern SPA" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47268523)) "It sounds too good to be true but I've been using it for years and it often really is that easy." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49276905)) "more tools available today like hotwire/turbo, liveview, etc. to make it easier" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49286293))
- Monorepo builds with caching (2 comments): "I've been using turbo repo a lot so I don't have to context switch the architecture in my head" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46523823)) "It's also wise to use monorepo orchestration with build caching like Turborepo." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46652635))

## What people warn about

- Less flexible than HTMX (3 comments): "turbo especially is a lot more opinionated than htmx" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46313652)) "I switched from Turbo to HTMX because the latter is much more flexible" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46323625)) "we replaced most of our Hotwired/Turbo with HTMX" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49483822))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [jQuery](https://hackerapproved.com/p/jquery.md): 111 recommend
- [Picknplace.js](https://hackerapproved.com/p/picknplace-js.md): 58 recommend
- [Alpine.js](https://hackerapproved.com/p/alpine-js.md): 50 recommend
- [Effect (TypeScript library)](https://hackerapproved.com/p/effect.md): 38 recommend
- [Video.js](https://hackerapproved.com/p/video-js.md): 24 recommend

## Cite as

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