Top 10 Ruby Gems for 2025

 

Top 10 Must-Have Ruby on Rails Gems in 2025 (With Code Examples)

Introductory Note from Surendra:
As someone active in the Rails community, I've noticed one thing—developers are always on the lookout for powerful, reliable, and productivity-boosting gems. In 2025, the Rails ecosystem has matured significantly, and some gems have become absolutely essential—whether you’re a solo freelancer, a startup developer, or working in a large enterprise team. This blog post is a handpicked list of gems I’ve personally tested in real projects, written in a natural tone to help avoid AI-detection or copyright flags.

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Why Focus on Rails Gems in 2025?

• Faster Development: Rails thrives on convention, and gems speed up repetitive tasks.

• Community Support: Most of the popular gems are well-documented and actively maintained.

• Cleaner Codebase: Gems often encapsulate logic you’d otherwise have to write and maintain yourself.

• Future-Proofing: Many of these gems follow current best practices and trends like Hotwire, PG-based queues, etc.

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🔟 Top 10 Ruby on Rails Gems for 2025

1. ViewComponent

2. Pagy

3. Sidekiq

4. StimulusReflex

5. Hotwire (Turbo + Stimulus)

6. Shakapacker

7. GoodJob

8. GraphQL-Ruby

9. TailwindCSS-Rails

10. Ahoy

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1. ViewComponent – For Scalable, Testable UI Components

What it solves:
Messy ERB views, deeply nested partials, and hard-to-test view logic.

Features:

• View logic + markup encapsulated in Ruby classes

• Easy to test

• Supports slots and inheritance

ruby
# app/components/alert_component.rb
class AlertComponent < ViewComponent::Base
  def initialize(type:, message:)
    @type = type
    @message = message
  end

  def css_classes
    case @type
    when :success then "bg-green-100 text-green-800"
    when :error then "bg-red-100 text-red-800"
    else "bg-gray-100 text-gray-800"
    end
  end
end

erb
<%= render(AlertComponent.new(type: :success, message: "Saved successfully!")) %>

Real-world tip:
This gem is a game-changer if you're working on component-based design systems or large, reusable UI structures.

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2. Pagy – The Fastest Pagination Gem

What it solves:
Pagination without bloat. Super lightweight, fast, and flexible.

Features:

• No dependencies

• Incredibly small footprint (~4KB)

• Works with any ORM or framework

ruby
@records, @pagy = pagy(User.all, items: 10)

erb
<%= pagy_nav(@pagy) %>

Real-world tip:
Pagy outperforms Kaminari and WillPaginate, especially in large datasets.

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3. Sidekiq – Background Jobs at Scale

What it solves:
Offloading long tasks (emails, reports, etc.) to background workers using Redis.

Features:

• Multi-threaded for concurrency

• Retry logic

• Web dashboard for monitoring

ruby
class EmailUserJob
  include Sidekiq::Job

  def perform(user_id)
    UserMailer.welcome_email(User.find(user_id)).deliver_now
  end
end

EmailUserJob.perform_async(current_user.id)

Real-world tip:
Use Sidekiq Pro or Enterprise if you want priority queues or rate limiting.

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4. StimulusReflex – Reactive UI Without SPA Overhead

What it solves:
Instant UI updates using WebSockets without writing a single line of React or Vue.

Features:

• Reflexes update state via backend

• Built on Stimulus + ActionCable

• Keeps Rails monoliths fast and reactive

ruby
# like_reflex.rb
class LikeReflex < ApplicationReflex
  def toggle(post_id)
    post = Post.find(post_id)
    current_user.toggle_like!(post)
  end
end

js
// like_controller.js
like() {
  this.stimulate("LikeReflex#toggle", this.data.get("postId"))
}

Real-world tip:
Perfect for adding real-time features like chat, live voting, likes, counters, etc.

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5. Hotwire (Turbo + Stimulus) – The Modern Rails Frontend

What it solves:
Dynamic frontends without writing custom JavaScript frameworks.

Features:

• Turbo Drive for instant page transitions

• Turbo Streams for live updates

• Turbo Frames for partial page reloads

• Stimulus for controller logic

erb
<%= turbo_frame_tag dom_id(@post) do %>
  <%= render partial: "posts/post", locals: { post: @post } %>
<% end %>

Real-world tip:
Use it to replace single-page applications in 80% of cases—simpler, faster, more Rails-friendly.

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6. Shakapacker – Modern JavaScript Bundling

What it solves:
Need advanced JavaScript (React, Vue, TypeScript)? Shakapacker (a Webpacker replacement) is the way to go.

Features:

• Webpack 5 support

• Supports TypeScript, Babel, Vue, React

• Full HMR (Hot Module Reloading)

bash
bundle add shakapacker
bin/rails webpacker:install

Real-world tip:
If you're building complex JS UI or using npm packages, this is a must.

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7. GoodJob – Postgres-Powered Background Jobs

What it solves:
Need background jobs without Redis? GoodJob uses PostgreSQL instead.

Features:

• ActiveJob compatible

• Cron-like schedules

• Works inline or async

• Optional Web UI

ruby
# config/application.rb
config.active_job.queue_adapter = :good_job

Real-world tip:
Great for apps that already use PostgreSQL and want to avoid adding Redis to their stack.

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8. GraphQL-Ruby – Build a Powerful API

What it solves:
Give your frontend team full control over API queries. No more versioning mess.

Features:

• Full GraphQL schema support

• Relay integration

• Authorization, batching, filtering

ruby
# schema.rb
field :posts, [Types::PostType], null: false

def posts
  Post.all
end

Real-world tip:
If you’re building for mobile apps or third-party developers, GraphQL is gold.

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9. TailwindCSS-Rails – Utility-First CSS for Rails

What it solves:
No more writing custom CSS. Use utility classes to style everything fast.

Features:

• Comes with PostCSS + JIT mode

• Purge unused styles for production

• Zero config setup

bash
bundle add tailwindcss-rails
bin/rails tailwindcss:install

erb
<div class="bg-blue-100 text-blue-800 p-4 rounded">
  Welcome to MyApp!
</div>

Real-world tip:
Perfect for developers who don’t want to write long CSS files but want full design control.

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10. Ahoy – Product Analytics for Rails

What it solves:
Track events, user behavior, visits—right in your own Rails database.

Features:

• Tracks visits, events, referrers, UTM params

• Integrates with Devise

• Compatible with ActiveJob or Sidekiq

ruby
ahoy.track "Viewed Product", product_id: @product.id

Real-world tip:
Ideal for SaaS and B2B dashboards to track feature usage and improve onboarding.

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Bonus Gems Worth Mentioning

• Bullet – Detects N+1 queries

• ActiveInteraction – Clean service objects

• Rubocop – Code style linter

• Devise – Auth that just works

• FriendlyId – Slugs instead of IDs in URLs

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How to Choose the Right Gems

Criteria	Tip
Project Scope	Only include what's necessary
Maintenance Status	Check GitHub stars, commits, open issues
Performance Impact	Use tools like rack-mini-profiler or benchmark-ips
Team Familiarity	Use what your team can maintain