IronAdmin

Convention-over-configuration admin panel engine for Ruby on Rails. Build beautiful admin interfaces with minimal code.

Get started now Try the live demo View on GitHub

The IronAdmin dashboard of the Meridian Magazine demo, with metric cards, a bar chart of articles published per month and a pie chart of articles by category

The live demo is Meridian Magazine, a Rails 8 app built with IronAdmin. Sign in as one of three users (an admin, an editor or an author; no password needed) and see how resource policies change what each role can do. Its source on GitHub has the resources, dashboard, policies and theme behind it.

For what changed in 0.7.0 and how it was tested, read IronAdmin 0.7: The Whole Roadmap Shipped, Then I Tried to Break It.

What is IronAdmin?

IronAdmin is a mountable Rails Engine that auto-generates CRUD admin interfaces directly from your ActiveRecord (or Mongoid) models. Mount it at /admin, point it at your models, and get a polished, searchable, themeable admin panel with almost no boilerplate.

# Gemfile
gem "iron_admin"
gem "tailwindcss-rails"

bundle install
rails generate iron_admin:install

Features

  • Zero-configuration CRUD — forms and tables inferred from your database schema.
  • Resource DSL — customize fields, filters, scopes, and actions in clean Ruby.
  • Dashboard builder — metrics, charts, and recent-record widgets.
  • Theme system — every UI element is a configurable Tailwind class.
  • Authorization — a built-in policy DSL for fine-grained access control.
  • Adapters — pluggable data-layer support (ActiveRecord, Mongoid, and custom).
  • Search & export — global search and CSV/JSON export out of the box.

Requirements

  • Ruby >= 3.3 (tested on 3.3, 3.4, and 4.0)
  • Rails >= 8.0.4 (tested on 8.0 and 8.1)
  • tailwindcss-rails >= 4.3
  • The default rails new JavaScript setup (importmap with Stimulus)

Upgrading from 0.6? See the Upgrade Guide.

Where to next?

I want to… Go to
Install IronAdmin Installation
Build my first admin panel Quick Start
Learn the resource DSL Resource DSL
Secure the admin Authorization
Support a custom data layer Adapters
Upgrade a major version Upgrade Guide