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Ruby

A dynamic, object-oriented language designed for programmer happiness and best known for Ruby on Rails. A new version comes out every Christmas.

  • Active project
  • Latest 4.0.9Oct 2026
  • Supported 3 versions
Download Official site 9 Ruby guides
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At a glance

Type
Programming language
Developer
Yukihiro Matsumoto and the Ruby core team
First release
21 Dec 1995
Release cadence
Yearly, on 25 December; about 3 years of support
Paradigm
Object-oriented, functional
Typing
Dynamic, strong (duck typing)
Reference implementation
CRuby (MRI) with YJIT
Package manager
RubyGems, Bundler
Best-known framework
Ruby on Rails
License
Ruby License / BSD 2-Clause
Website
ruby-lang.org

Newest release

Ruby 4.0

Released 25 Dec 2025 · latest update 4.0.9

Support status

4.0 Supported

Until 31 Mar 2029 · in 2 years

3.4 Supported

Until 31 Mar 2028 · in 1 year

3.3 Supported

Until 31 Mar 2027 · in 4 months

3.2 End of life

Ended 31 Mar 2026 · 7 months ago

Release history

VersionReleasedLatestEnd of lifeStatus
4.025 Dec 20254.0.931 Mar 2029Supported
3.424 Dec 20243.4.1231 Mar 2028Supported
3.325 Dec 20233.3.1331 Mar 2027Supported
3.225 Dec 20223.2.1131 Mar 2026End of life
3.125 Dec 20213.1.726 Mar 2025End of life
3.025 Dec 20203.0.723 Apr 2024End of life
2.725 Dec 20192.7.831 Mar 2023End of life
2.625 Dec 20182.6.1031 Mar 2022End of life
2.525 Dec 20172.5.931 Mar 2021End of life
2.423 Dec 20162.4.1031 Mar 2020End of life
2.324 Dec 20152.3.831 Mar 2019End of life
2.225 Dec 20142.2.1031 Mar 2018End of life
2.125 Dec 20132.1.1031 Mar 2017End of life
2.0.024 Feb 20132.0.0p64824 Feb 2016End of life
1.9.330 Oct 20111.9.3p55123 Feb 2015End of life

Release data: endoflife.date and vendor announcements, checked 13 Nov 2026. Spotted a mistake? Tell us.

Support timeline

The 12 most recent releases, from release day to the end of support.

  • Active support
  • Today
4.0
3.4
3.3
3.2
3.1
3.0
2.7
2.6
2.5
2.4
2.3
2.2

History

Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto created Ruby in Japan in the mid-1990s, blending ideas from Perl, Smalltalk and Lisp into a language “designed for programmer happiness”. It was mostly known in Japan until David Heinemeier Hansson released Ruby on Rails in 2004, which made Ruby a favourite of web start-ups such as GitHub, Shopify and Basecamp.

A new minor version comes out every year on 25 December. Each is supported for about three years: normal maintenance first, then security fixes only. Recent work has focused on performance, including the YJIT compiler built by Shopify, as well as Ractors for parallelism and the Prism parser.

Milestones

  1. 1995Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto publishes Ruby 0.95
  2. 1996Ruby 1.0 is released
  3. 2004Ruby on Rails is released and makes Ruby popular worldwide
  4. 2007Ruby 1.9 introduces the YARV virtual machine
  5. 2013Ruby 2.0 ships on Ruby's 20th anniversary
  6. 2020Ruby 3.0 arrives on Christmas Day with Ractors and RBS type signatures
  7. 2022YJIT becomes production-ready in Ruby 3.2
  8. 2024Ruby 3.4 makes Prism the default parser

Ruby guides

Browse all 9 Ruby guides →

Frequently asked questions

What is the latest version of Ruby?

The newest Ruby release is Ruby 4.0, released on 25 Dec 2025. Its latest update is 4.0.9 (22 Oct 2026).

Which Ruby versions are still supported?

As of 13 Nov 2026, 3 versions are supported: Ruby 4.0 (until 31 Mar 2029); Ruby 3.4 (until 31 Mar 2028); Ruby 3.3 (until 31 Mar 2027).

Is Ruby 3.2 still supported?

No. Ruby 3.2 reached end of life on 31 Mar 2026 and no longer gets free security updates. Upgrade to Ruby 4.0.

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