Ruby on Rails End of Life - Dates and Lifecycle

Ruby on Rails is a full-stack, server-side web application framework written in Ruby, built around convention-over-configuration to let developers build applications quickly with minimal boilerplate. It handles the backend, routing, database interactions, and templating, and is a strictly backend framework, not a frontend one, though it can render frontend views and integrate with JavaScript tooling.

Ruby on Rails Lifecycle Explained

Rails' official maintenance policy is precise: each minor version gets one year of bug fixes (Active Support) and two years of security fixes total from its first release (Security Support), after which it reaches end of life. Rails aims to ship a new version with new features every six months, and if that schedule slips, the policy explicitly extends the previous version's support to cover the gap, which is exactly what happened with Rails 8.0, its Active Support window ran longer than the usual year because 8.1 arrived later than typical.