You keep running into Ember in older codebases and job posts, and you want to know what it is and whether it is still alive. It is, and it still ships a release roughly every six weeks.
What Is Ember.js?
Ember.js is an open-source, opinionated JavaScript framework for building large single-page web apps. It ships with a router, components, a data layer, a build tool and a test runner, and it fixes your project layout so every Ember app looks familiar. Yehuda Katz and Tom Dale created it around 2011.
The tagline on emberjs.com is "A framework for ambitious web developers." That fits. Ember trades flexibility for conventions, and it bets that a team of ten people shipping for five years will be happier with one agreed way to do things than with ten.
As of today the latest release is Ember 7.3, announced on October 5, 2026. Ember 7.0 shipped on May 29, 2026 and added no new public API. It only removed things that were deprecated during the 6.x cycle. Ember 6.12 is the current LTS release. The project follows a six-week release train, so upgrades are small and regular instead of rare and painful.
One correction to how older articles describe it: Ember is not an MVVM framework built on Handlebars with two-way data binding. Modern Ember uses one-way data flow, native JavaScript classes and tracked state. If you read about "computed properties" and "two-way bindings," you are reading about Ember from before 2019.
Ember.js Core Concepts
You can learn Ember by learning five pieces. Each one has a fixed place in the project, which is the point.
The router
Routing is the center of an Ember app. You define your URLs in one file, app/router.js, and each route loads the data for its page and renders a template. Nested routes map to nested UI, so a URL like /posts/42/comments produces a layout inside a layout.
Because the router owns data loading, a route can finish its async work before the page renders. That keeps loading and error states in one place instead of scattered across components.
Components and templates
Pages are built from components: a template plus an optional JavaScript class. Since the Octane edition (Ember 3.15), components are Glimmer components, written as native classes. State that should trigger a re-render is marked with @tracked, and the framework re-renders only what depends on it.
Newer Ember apps also use the template tag format (.gjs and .gts files), where the template lives in the same file as the component class, similar in spirit to JSX.
Ember Data
Ember Data is the data library for fetching, caching and relating records from your API. It gives you models, relationships and a shared store, so two components showing the same record stay in sync. The Ember homepage describes it as included in every new app and able to pull from multiple sources.
One update worth knowing: since Ember 6.10, new apps are generated with the @warp-drive/* packages (WarpDrive, the project's evolution of Ember Data) instead of the old ember-data package. It runs in a legacy mode for now, so existing Ember Data code keeps working.
Ember CLI
Ember CLI is the command-line tool and build pipeline. It generates apps, routes, components and tests, runs the dev server with live reload, runs your test suite and produces a production build with one command. New apps have used Vite and Embroider since Ember 6.8. Ember CLI now requires Node 20.19.0 or later.
npx ember-cli new my-app
cd my-app
npx ember generate route posts
npx ember testGenerators matter more than they look. When every route, component and test lands in the same folder with the same shape, a new developer finds things without asking.
Glimmer and Octane
Glimmer is Ember's rendering engine. It compiles templates into a compact virtual machine and updates the DOM directly, and Ember's homepage calls it one of the fastest rendering technologies available. Octane is the name of the edition that brought together Glimmer components, tracked properties, native classes and modifiers. Think of it as the modern programming model, not a separate framework.
Ember also ships a testing story out of the box: unit, rendering (integration) and acceptance tests, plus the Ember Inspector browser extension for debugging a running app.
Ember vs React
The two solve the same problem from opposite ends. React is a rendering library and you assemble the rest. Ember is the rest, already assembled.
| Ember.js | React | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Full framework | UI library |
| Routing | Built in | Add a router (or use Next.js) |
| Data layer | Ember Data / WarpDrive | Your choice (TanStack Query, SWR, Redux) |
| Project structure | Enforced by conventions | Up to you |
| Build tool | Ember CLI (Vite and Embroider) | Vite, Next.js or similar |
| Testing | Built in | Add your own setup |
| Upgrades | Six-week train, codemods and deprecations | Varies by stack |
| Learning curve | Steep up front, flatter later | Gentle start, decisions pile up |
| Hiring pool | Small | Very large |
Ember wins when a team is large or long-lived and wants fewer architecture debates. React wins on ecosystem size, job market and the freedom to pick tools per project. If you want to see how React moved recently, I covered it in a deep dive into React 19. For another framework comparison, see my intro to Vue.js.
Who Still Uses Ember.js in 2026?
The Ember homepage shows a logo list that includes Netflix, Intercom, Microsoft, Square, CrowdStrike, Apple, LinkedIn and Heroku. I can't tell you how much of each company's current product runs on Ember, and a logo on a homepage is not a usage statistic. What the list does show is the kind of user Ember has: long-lived, large web apps where a stable upgrade path matters more than trends.
In practice, you will meet Ember in two places: dashboards and admin tools at established companies, and legacy codebases that someone needs to maintain or migrate. Greenfield Ember projects exist, but they are a small share of new work compared to React and Next.js.
Should You Learn Ember.js?
Learn it if one of these is true:
- You are joining a team that already runs an Ember app.
- You maintain or plan to upgrade a legacy Ember codebase.
- You like convention-driven frameworks and want to see a mature example of one.
Skip it if your goal is the widest job market or you are picking a stack for a small new product. React and Next.js have far more jobs, libraries and answers on the internet.
My take: Ember is not dead and not trendy. It is a stable tool for teams that value conventions, and the six-week release train and the move to Vite show it is still moving. The ideas (route-driven data loading, generators, a clear upgrade path) are worth knowing even if you never ship it.
If you have an Ember app that needs maintenance or a migration plan, you can get in touch and tell me what you are working with.
Frequently Asked
Is Ember.js still used in 2026? Yes. Ember 7.3 was released on October 5, 2026, and the project ships on a six-week cycle. Usage is concentrated in established apps rather than new projects.
Is Ember.js a framework or a library? A framework. It includes routing, components, a data layer, a build tool and testing, unlike React, which is a UI library.
Is Ember.js hard to learn? The first weeks are steep because you learn conventions before you build much. After that, new features tend to follow patterns you already know.
What is Ember Data? The data library bundled with Ember. It handles fetching, caching and relationships between records. New apps now use the WarpDrive packages.
Who created Ember.js? Yehuda Katz and Tom Dale, around 2011.