reflex VS Elm

Compare reflex vs Elm and see what are their differences.

reflex

Interactive programs without callbacks or side-effects. Functional Reactive Programming (FRP) uses composable events and time-varying values to describe interactive systems as pure functions. Just like other pure functional code, functional reactive code is easier to get right on the first try, maintain, and reuse. (by reflex-frp)

Elm

Compiler for Elm, a functional language for reliable webapps. (by elm)
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reflex Elm
17 213
1,091 7,650
-0.2% 0.2%
6.9 4.0
about 1 month ago 12 months ago
Haskell Haskell
BSD 3-clause "New" or "Revised" License BSD 3-clause "New" or "Revised" License
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

reflex

Posts with mentions or reviews of reflex. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-12-08.
  • On inheritance and why it's good Rust doesn't have it
    5 projects | /r/rust | 8 Dec 2023
    There's other people around here who would like to know your opinion about these GUI frameworks! I haven't written a GUI in Rust personally, but my favorite GUI framework is not at all OOP: https://reflex-frp.org/
  • Reflex – Web apps in pure Python
    9 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 2 Aug 2023
    Not to be confused with Reflex, allowing web apps in pure Haskell: https://reflex-frp.org/
  • Interactive animations
    11 projects | /r/haskell | 6 May 2023
    FRP solutions sound very attractive. But reflex seems to be stuck on the outdated GHCJS, and I haven't been able to get it to build. The newer JS output in GHC doesn't yet have DOM support. And even if I used one of those, figuring out how to interact with a LaTeX renderer might be tricky.
  • The Quest for the Ultimate GUI Framework
    4 projects | /r/programming | 22 Apr 2023
    I only have experience using Reflex, which I regard as the main contender for FRP UI libraries in the Haskell sphere. It's got a flashy website, but I think the documentation is a bit disorganized -- it took a long time for me to figure out how to get going with the library (you find some pieces of knowledge scattered here and there, if you look hard enough). My plan was to learn it well enough to onboard other people, but I don't think I could convince anyone who hasn't already decided that they're gonna make UIs in Haskell no matter the required effort.
  • Reflex FRP
    1 project | /r/cryptogeum | 23 Jan 2023
  • Simple GHC stack for a novice
    6 projects | /r/haskell | 17 Oct 2022
    Once someone has spent a bunch of time with Haskell and sees the value, they will find Nix if it makes sense. Maybe they'll want to play with https://reflex-frp.org, or they'll discover they want a better way to package 3rd-party dependencies, or they start using NixOS and want to nix all the things, etc. etc. Or, maybe they'll never find a use for it, and that's okay.
  • Building on iPad
    1 project | /r/haskell | 6 Oct 2022
    Reflex natively supports iOS, along with Android, desktop and web. I would recommend it for functional reactive programming in Haskell: https://reflex-frp.org
  • Functional Reactive Programming
    9 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 16 Aug 2022
  • HTML5 Ubuntu App with native component?
    1 project | /r/pinephone | 26 Mar 2022
    It's been awhile since I've tried to get into Ubuntu Touch/Linux mobile development in earnest. I'm currently working on an app using the reflex framework that I hope to eventually target Android, iOS, Desktop, and Linux Mobile.
  • Event driven programming in haskell
    1 project | /r/haskell | 22 Feb 2022
    If you're talking about the current Elm approach, I'm not sure. Otherwise, the paper I linked to notes some of the FRP libraries that existed at the time, some of which are still supported today (like reactive-banana), and otherwise I'd suggest looking at reflex, mentioned in the first post in this thread. I don't think it existed at the time the Elm paper came out.

Elm

Posts with mentions or reviews of Elm. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2025-06-22.
  • How to build a reliable web application with Elm, GraphQL, PostGraphile and PostgreSQL
    11 projects | dev.to | 22 Jun 2025
    To do that, we will use the Elm programming language.
  • 3 Options to Avoid Side-Effects in Web Dev
    2 projects | dev.to | 23 Apr 2025
    Use languages that don’t have side-effects; Elm for UI, and Roc for API/CLI.
  • Reactivity in Programming
    2 projects | dev.to | 15 Apr 2025
    Reactive programming itself is rarely found in pure form. It is often combined with other paradigms. This is how such mixes as Imperative Reactive Programming, Object-Oriented Reactive Programming and Functional Reactive Programming appeared. The latter is the most popular, and the Elm language is considered one of its main representatives.
  • Tsonnet #13 - Carets, columns, and clues: adding lexing error tracing
    1 project | dev.to | 28 Mar 2025
    I've drawn inspiration from Elm and the blog post Compiler Errors for Humans -- it is nearly a decade old and still inspiring to read.
  • An Ode to TypeScript Enums
    9 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 2 Mar 2025
    When I see this it makes me want to run for ReasonML/ReScript/Elm/PureScript.

    Sum types (without payloads on the instances they are effectively enums) should not require a evening filling ceremonial dance event to define.

    https://reasonml.github.io/

    https://rescript-lang.org/

    https://elm-lang.org/

    https://www.purescript.org/

    (any I forgot?)

    It's nice that TS is a strict super set of JS... But that's about the only reason TS is nice. Apart from that the "being a strict super set" hampers TS is a million and one ways.

    To my JS is too broken to fix with a strict super set.

  • Why I'm leaving Elm (2020)
    3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 16 Feb 2025
    > It appears the last commits on GitHub are from mid 2024

    That's not what I see.

    The last commits for elm/compiler were minor fixes in 2023. Last substantial changes were in 2021. See https://github.com/elm/compiler/commits/master/

    The last commits for elm/core were in the first months of 2021. See https://github.com/elm/core/commits/master/

    > It appears the main developer is working on a new thing?

    One of the problems is that the developer said several times, even in a recent interview, that he was still working on elm, with a focus on the long term. He gave a few vague hints about his private roadmap. After 4 years without any real public activity, I find it hard to believe there's some private activity.

  • Top FP technologies
    22 projects | dev.to | 29 Oct 2024
    Elm
  • Run elm and lunarvim in a devcontainer
    1 project | dev.to | 27 Oct 2024
  • TypeScript's Lack of Naming Types and Type Conversion in Angular
    6 projects | dev.to | 17 Oct 2024
    Elm, ReScript, F#, Ocaml, Scala… it’s just normal to name your types, then use them places. In fact, you’ll often create the types _before_ the code, even if you’re not really practicing DDD (Domain Driven Design). Yes, you’ll do many after the fact when doing functions, or you start testing things and decide to change your design, and make new types. Either way, it’s just “the norm”. You then do the other norms like “name your function” and “name your variables”. I’m a bit confused why it’s only 2 out of 3 (variables and functions, not types) in this TypeScript Angular project. I’ll have to look at other internal Angular projects and see if it’s common there as well.
  • How I host Elm web applications with GitHub Pages
    15 projects | dev.to | 17 Oct 2024
    A web application makes use of these same ingredients, i.e. HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, but it uses significantly more JavaScript. As the JavaScript powering your web application grows in size it can bring with it a variety of problems that a few languages, like TypeScript, ReScript, PureScript, and Elm, have attempted to solve. Each of the aforementioned compile to JavaScript languages have their pros and cons but it is beyond the scope of this article to get into those details. Suffice it to say, my preference is Elm. It is also not the goal of this article to convince you to use Elm but only to show you how Elm fits into the flow of creating a web application and hosting it on GitHub Pages. So let's continue by adding Elm to our project.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing reflex and Elm you can also consider the following projects:

dunai - Classic FRP, Arrowized FRP, Reactive Programming, and Stream Programming, all via Monadic Stream Functions

language-thrift - Haskell parser for the Thrift IDL format.

sodium - Sodium - Functional Reactive Programming (FRP) Library for multiple languages

idris - A Dependently Typed Functional Programming Language

reflex-dom - Web applications without callbacks or side-effects. Reflex-DOM brings the power of functional reactive programming (FRP) to the web. Build HTML and other Document Object Model (DOM) data with a pure functional interface.

purescript - A strongly-typed language that compiles to JavaScript

Stream - Scalable APIs for Chat, Feeds, Moderation, & Video.
Stream helps developers build engaging apps that scale to millions with performant and flexible Chat, Feeds, Moderation, and Video APIs and SDKs powered by a global edge network and enterprise-grade infrastructure.
getstream.io
featured
InfluxDB – Built for High-Performance Time Series Workloads
InfluxDB 3 OSS is now GA. Transform, enrich, and act on time series data directly in the database. Automate critical tasks and eliminate the need to move data externally. Download now.
www.influxdata.com
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