About Phoenix
Phoenix is a web framework for the Elixir programming language. It is designed to help build rich, interactive web applications quickly, with less code and fewer moving parts. The framework supports crafting APIs, HTML5 apps, and more, for fun or at scale.
Key features
- Real-time interaction with users and push events across one or dozens of nodes using built-in PubSub and Channels
- Full-featured authentication that grows with the application via mix phx.gen.auth
- GraphQL and JSON API support, including built-in JSON support and integration with Absinthe for GraphQL
- Docker readiness with optional Dockerfile generation for deployment
- Built-in instrumentation and a live dashboard for monitoring performance and diagnosing issues
- Scalability through running on the Erlang VM
Phoenix: questions and answers
- What is Phoenix?
- Phoenix is a web framework for Elixir that helps build rich, interactive web applications quickly with less code.
- Is Phoenix open source?
- Yes. Phoenix is open source under the MIT licence. Its source code is on GitHub at phoenixframework/phoenix and is written mainly in Elixir.
- Is Phoenix free?
- Yes. Phoenix is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
- Can I self-host Phoenix?
- Yes. Phoenix can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
- What is Phoenix an alternative to?
- Phoenix is an open-source alternative to Pusher and BetterTouchTool. Other open-source alternatives to Pusher include Centrifugo, Mercure and Supabase Auth.
- Is Phoenix actively maintained?
- Yes. The most recent commit to Phoenix was on 13 October 2026, and the latest release is v1.8.15, published on 25 September 2026. The project has 23k stars on GitHub.
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