Replace Forest Admin
An admin interface generated from your schema, hosted outside your application.
Why teams move off Forest Admin
Forest generates an admin from your schema and hosts it outside your application — which means your admin can be down while your app is up.
What you give up
Row-level permissions and audit logging out of the box.
This directory says so when an engine only covers part of the job. A replacement that needs a caveat is still worth knowing about — it just should not surprise you in week three.
6 Rails engines that replace Forest Admin
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Madmin
Drop-in replacement Admin and internal toolsSame job — an admin panel over your schema — running in your app rather than somebody else's.
Forest Admin → madmin
No ratings yet → -
Administrate
Drop-in replacement Admin and internal toolsGenerated admin screens over your models, in your app.
Forest Admin → administrate
No ratings yet → -
Avo
Drop-in replacement Admin and internal toolsThe same job, running inside your app.
Forest Admin → avo
5.0 · 4 ratings → -
Trestle
Drop-in replacement Admin and internal toolsA complete admin with tables, forms, scopes and search.
Forest Admin → trestle
No ratings yet → -
ActiveAdmin
Drop-in replacement Admin and internal toolsA complete admin interface with filters, scopes, batch actions and exports.
Forest Admin → activeadmin
No ratings yet → -
Rails Admin
Drop-in replacement Admin and internal toolsAn admin over every model, with no per-model setup at all.
Forest Admin → rails_admin
No ratings yet →
Questions
- Is there an open-source alternative to Forest Admin for Rails?
- Yes — Madmin, Administrate, Avo, Trestle, ActiveAdmin, and Rails Admin. They all mount into an application you already run, so there is no second deployment and no second database.
- What do I give up by replacing Forest Admin?
- Row-level permissions and audit logging out of the box.
- How do I replace Forest Admin in a Rails app?
- Add madmin to your Gemfile, mount it in config/routes.rb at /admin, and run its migrations. The whole integration is two lines and a migration.
- How much does replacing Forest Admin save?
- Forest Admin is priced free tier, paid tiers scale. The engines here are open source, so the cost becomes the time to mount one and the resources it uses inside your existing application.
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