Active Admin Alternative: how does Avo compare to Active Admin?

Yes, we're biased. We build Avo everyday with the goal to be the best admin framework for Ruby on Rails.

But we don't want to trick you into making the wrong decision. So, here's an honest answer:

Active Admin and Avo are both admin frameworks that strive for the same thing: help you build better admin panels, faster by cutting repetitive tasks like creating the same index table or edit form for every resource. Boring, right?

However, Avo and Active Admin were created in different eras. Active Admin is very popular and battle tested, but Avo is built for the current state of Rails apps: Hotwire, ViewComponent, Tailwind, and the asset pipeline Rails ships today.

We truly respect what Active Admin did to push admin libraries in the Rails ecosystem forward and we thank them for their efforts in doing so.

Nonetheless, we built Avo with the goal of improving what our predecessors did and we think we're doing a good job so far.

Having said this, let us start by telling you why Active Admin, and admin frameworks in general can be a drag in the long run:

It's not only an Active Admin issue, it also happens to other alternatives like Rails Admin: you gain a lot of initial momentum that gets diluted as your use case slightly deviates from the defaults or customization needs arise.

At that point, it feels like you're fighting against the library instead of working with it.

The issues arise mostly because you end up writing more library-specific code than Rails and as you enjoyed the initial productivity gains, you didn't realize that migrating out of the library gets more difficult with time because of the way they're designed.

This situation is specially bad with Active Admin, it brings an opinionated way to do things and that can become a burden where your use cases deviates from the documented way of doing stuff or when you need heavy customization.

We know the feeling and that's why Avo comes with a lot of ways to customize the admin experience and even ways to progressively eject from Avo when you feel the need for it.

Plus, we're also working on features that can help our user further customize their experience and maximize their productivity.

More than a decade after its 2011 debut, Active Admin is still one of the most popular admin libraries for Rails, and that longevity is real proof it solved a real problem.

When you first start using it, it feels like you have super-powers: you are more productive and you can get features going way faster than you thought you could.

But it has its limitations, and on today's Rails some of them have gotten sharper. They show up as soon as you need to customize your UI, add fields that don't come with the library, upgrade to Rails 8, or do anything that deviates from the happy path.

You're suddenly cornered by the library and it starts to feel like you have to pay for your initial wins.

So let's walk through some of the issues Active Admin has:

• A UI that shows its age on the version you'll actually run: Active Admin's stable 3.x line still carries the look it had in the early 2010s. It's not mobile ready, and the dense layout adds cognitive load to everyday work. Version 4 finally brings a Tailwind based interface with mobile, dark mode, and RTL support, which is a genuine step forward, but it has been in beta for years, so the modern UI is not the one most teams run in production today.

• Rails 8 puts you in an asset-pipeline bind: Active Admin 3.x is tied to Sprockets, while Rails 8 ships Propshaft by default. You either keep Sprockets around just to serve the admin, or move to the still-beta version 4 and take on Node, Tailwind, and importmap setup steps. Either way you inherit build plumbing that has nothing to do with your product. Avo runs on the asset pipeline Rails ships today, so there's no dilemma to resolve.

• The big rewrite has been in beta for years: Version 4 is where the modern UI and Propshaft support live, but it has been shipping beta releases for a long time (beta20 landed in January 2026) without a stable release. Building on it means building on a moving, unfinished target, and the stable line you can safely ship keeps the older constraints.

• Sub-par documentation: Active Admin is reasonably well documented if you count Stack Overflow and blog posts. But because of the library's age, a lot of those resources are outdated and hard to find, and the official docs leave many use cases uncovered. You'll usually get there in the end, but you can waste real time in the process.

• Limited field options: Active Admin comes with a very limited set of form fields. Even though they can help you get started you will definitely be reaching out for more fields sooner than later. With Active Admin your best option is installing an outdated dependency to handle those needs for you which is not very desirable. You can create custom fields if you want but even creating those is not as straightforward as it should be.

• A DSL, and Arbre, for everything: DSLs are part of Rails and Ruby, but they carry cognitive load and can become a burden when they cover everything. Active Admin uses a DSL for configuration, customization, and even for defining views through Arbre, a Ruby DSL for HTML that few developers use anywhere else. You have to learn it, and views written in it are hard to reuse or migrate away from later, unlike the HTML partials and ViewComponent you already know.

• Customization is hard: the initial development gains can be easily outset by the time you waste customizing Active Admin to fit your needs. Making Active Admin work according to your needs can be difficult and it's one of its most obvious disadvantages.

• You carry the integration work: Active Admin's stable line is maintained but slow to add features, and the momentum sits in the beta version 4 branch. In practice that leaves you doing the integration work yourself, wiring up assets, filling documentation gaps, and keeping third-party plugins current, on a codebase that isn't your product.

• Dependent on outdated third party code for core features: as it usually happens with admin libraries, Active Admin depends on third-party code to offer features that come out of the box. Relying on dependencies is not necessarily bad but can become an issue with time, especially if the third-party code is not properly maintained or abandoned altogether.

Admin panel UI's should be an after-thought right? After all, who cares what an admin panel looks like.

Even if that's what you personally think about admin panels, truth is that users expect more and more from their interactions with software nowadays.

Long gone are the days where barely decent user experiences were enough for most users since better alternatives were just not available.

That's why Avo was built from day one with great care for details and user experience in mind.

Avo is not a mere database browser or a slightly better Rails scaffold generator.

It's an integral tool built with the goal of increasing dev productivity while also being a pleasant experience for end users.

With Avo there's no need to pay for a designer to make your admin panel look good, we sweat on the little details so you don't have to.

Yes you can, absolutely.

At first, you can be more productive with Avo since you get more features right from the start. You will find that having more than 30 fields is a huge productivity boost for almost any Rails project you start.

As time goes by you will also find that Avo helps you develop faster because of the plethora of customization features and escape hatches we offer.

Avo doesn't take over every aspect of your admin panel if you don't want to. You can customize it using the tools you already know and avoid fighting against its DSL or documentation.

To be fair, there are cases where Active Admin is still a reasonable choice. If you have an existing app already running Active Admin happily, a simple content-centric site with a handful of resources, or a team that doesn't plan to move to Rails 8 or customize much, the cost of switching may not be worth it, and Active Admin will keep doing the job.

But if you're starting something new, expecting to customize as you grow, moving to Rails 8, or you want an admin your team can actually work from on a phone, you're better off building on Avo. That's where Active Admin's age starts to cost you and where Avo's modern foundation pays off. And the switch itself is smaller than it sounds: Avo mounts beside Active Admin in the same app, so you can replace your admin one resource at a time in about a week, without a big-bang cutover.

You're probably wondering why would anyone pay for an admin framework like Avo if there are other alternatives like Administrate, Rails Admin or even Active Admin itself right?

Well, first of all: Avo has a generous free Community tier that covers a large share of what the paid plans offer, so you can build a real admin panel without paying anything.

You can start building your product with it and move to a paid plan whenever the extra features start to earn their keep. And when you do, Avo 4 is priced per app with unlimited team members, so adding people never inflates the bill.

That price also buys something a free library can't: the design work, the security hardening, the edge cases, and the ongoing maintenance are ours to carry, not yours. Every hour you don't spend building and babysitting admin infrastructure is an hour on the product your customers actually pay for.

The time Avo saves usually dwarfs what any of the licenses cost. Even compared to building on a free Rails admin framework, Avo keeps you focused on adding value instead of writing yet another select component or search feature.

But don't take our word on it, give Avo a try by checking our demo application or installing it for your next project and see for yourself how it can positively affect your development flow.