Why Tubi Chose Elixir and Its Benefits: A Technical Journey

At a recent Tubi Elixir Meetup, attendees frequently asked why Tubi chose Elixir and what benefits it brings, reflecting interest in both the language and technology selection based on business needs.

The meetup highlighted Tubi’s evolution from a PHP stack to Node.js and finally to Elixir, driven by maintainability concerns and the need for a high‑performance policy engine that determines video eligibility.

By rewriting the policy engine in Node.js, response times dropped from ~10 seconds to 1‑2 seconds, but growing video volume soon exceeded Node.js capabilities. An Elixir‑based solution compiled policy strings into thousands of functions, achieving a 100× speedup in a proof‑of‑concept.

Following the successful POC, Elixir was adopted for the policy engine and later for other services such as the content materialization service and a video processing platform, demonstrating its suitability for high‑concurrency, distributed systems.

Engineers shared personal experiences, noting that Elixir’s functional style, immutable data, and rich ecosystem (e.g., Ecto) simplify development, while concerns about the language’s niche status proved unfounded; problem‑solving ability matters more than language popularity.

Links to related articles are provided for deeper insight into Tubi’s Elixir projects and performance challenges: Elixir / OTP multimedia E2E platform , A 7‑year performance issue hidden in the Elixir codebase , and Ruby thinking in Elixir projects .