Simple from zero to scale

Fast development with robust practices
Grows from solo developers to teams of hundreds
Scales from single servers to global networks
Built on decades of Erlang reliability and fault-tolerance

Composable data transformations

"Fun to learn, delightful to ship"
|> String.downcase()
|> String.replace(",", "")
|> String.split()
|> Enum.frequencies()

Output

%{"delightful" => 1, "fun" => 1,
  "learn" => 1, "ship" => 1, "to" => 2}

Why Elixir?

Maintenance

Elixir helps developers write clear and purposeful code that focuses on your data and your domain. Thanks to immutability, memory safety, and Elixir's gradual type system, you can build systems that recover from failures and are easy to maintain.

Scalability

A single Elixir codebase can scale vertically (on multi-core machines) and horizontally (communicating across nodes), excelling at message-oriented and web real-time systems. Combined with projects like Numerical Elixir, Elixir scales across cores, clusters, and GPUs.

Loved by developers

Voted one of the world's most admired languages several years in a row.

See survey results

Productivity

Elixir ships with a package manager, code formatter, and best in class documentation. Projects like IEx (interactive shell) and Livebook (interactive notebooks) enable rapid prototyping and live-debugging of running systems.

Elixir in production

Elixir is used by solopreneurs and Fortune 500 companies alike, supporting teams that value developer happiness as well as large-scale operations, across diverse industries and applications.

See our cases

Use Elixir for

Web development

The Phoenix web framework delivers rapid development, LiveView adds real-time features with minimal code, and Ecto makes your data layer a joy to work with. Ship faster, at scale.

# Update server state from browser events
defmodule MyAppWeb.CounterLive do
  use MyAppWeb, :live_view

  def mount(_params, _session, socket) do
    {:ok, assign(socket, count: 0)}
  end

  def handle_event("increment", _, socket) do
    {:noreply, update(socket, :count, &(&1 + 1))}
  end
end

Embedded systems

Nerves packages your entire application into compact firmware, with over-the-air updates and telecom-grade fault-tolerance, while AtomVM brings Elixir to devices as small as microcontrollers.

# Control hardware from a supervised process
def handle_info(:toggle_led, %{led: led} = state) do
  next_level = 1 - state.level

  :ok = Circuits.GPIO.write(led, next_level)
  Process.send_after(self(), :toggle_led, 500)

  {:noreply, %{state | level: next_level}}
end

Machine Learning

Numerical Elixir (Nx) brings GPU-accelerated tensors to Elixir, while Livebook makes exploration interactive: run pre-trained models, visualize data, and deploy - all in one place.

# Run a pre-trained model with Nx acceleration
{:ok, model} =
  Bumblebee.load_model({:hf, "google/vit"})
{:ok, featurizer} =
  Bumblebee.load_featurizer({:hf, "google/vit"})

serving =
  Bumblebee.Vision.image_classification(model, featurizer,
    compile: [batch_size: 1],
    defn_options: [compiler: EXLA]
  )

Nx.Serving.run(serving, image)

Data and media

Process data at scale with backpressure and concurrency. Use Broadway for robust queue processing, Membrane for designing audio and video pipelines, and Oban for background jobs and durable workflows.

# Broadway controls demand and applies backpressure
Broadway.start_link(MyPipeline,
  producer: [
    module: BroadwaySQS.Producer
  ],
  processors: [
    default: [concurrency: 50]
  ],
  batchers: [
    storage: [batch_size: 100, batch_timeout: 1_000]
  ]
)

IoT & Distributed Systems

Thanks to the Erlang VM, Elixir also excels at IoT, distributed systems, and everything Erlang is renowned for. Explore some excellent Erlang projects below.

# Connect nodes through Erlang distribution
edge_nodes = [:"edge@factory-1", :"edge@factory-2"]

Enum.each(edge_nodes, &Node.connect/1)

# Execute concurrently across every connected node
:erpc.multicall(
  edge_nodes,
  Sensor, :read_temperature, []
)

What will you build?

The ecosystem grows every day. Explore thousands of community packages on Hex and find the tools for your next project.

Install now See all packages

# Update server state from browser events
defmodule MyAppWeb.CounterLive do
  use MyAppWeb, :live_view

  def mount(_params, _session, socket) do
    {:ok, assign(socket, count: 0)}
  end

  def handle_event("increment", _, socket) do
    {:noreply, update(socket, :count, &(&1 + 1))}
  end
end

# Control hardware from a supervised process
def handle_info(:toggle_led, %{led: led} = state) do
  next_level = 1 - state.level

  :ok = Circuits.GPIO.write(led, next_level)
  Process.send_after(self(), :toggle_led, 500)

  {:noreply, %{state | level: next_level}}
end

# Run a pre-trained model with Nx acceleration
{:ok, model} =
  Bumblebee.load_model({:hf, "google/vit"})
{:ok, featurizer} =
  Bumblebee.load_featurizer({:hf, "google/vit"})

serving =
  Bumblebee.Vision.image_classification(model, featurizer,
    compile: [batch_size: 1],
    defn_options: [compiler: EXLA]
  )

Nx.Serving.run(serving, image)

# Broadway controls demand and applies backpressure
Broadway.start_link(MyPipeline,
  producer: [
    module: BroadwaySQS.Producer
  ],
  processors: [
    default: [concurrency: 50]
  ],
  batchers: [
    storage: [batch_size: 100, batch_timeout: 1_000]
  ]
)

# Connect nodes through Erlang distribution
edge_nodes = [:"edge@factory-1", :"edge@factory-2"]

Enum.each(edge_nodes, &Node.connect/1)

# Execute concurrently across every connected node
:erpc.multicall(
  edge_nodes,
  Sensor, :read_temperature, []
)

Shaped by many

Elixir is shaped by the contributions of many. The Elixir Team steers the language and the Erlang Ecosystem Foundation supports Elixir and the broader Erlang community.

Erlang Ecosystem Foundation

Join the foundation

Elixir Open Source Stewards

Companies investing in the Elixir ecosystem by employing or sponsoring developers to work full-time on open-source tooling.

GeezerVison