AutoMapper overuse despite poor fit

5/10 Medium

AutoMapper has become the de facto mapping library in .NET despite its own creator recommending against use cases where >80% of fields are manually mapped. Developers adopt it even when inappropriate, leading to unmapped field issues and invalid mapping flags.

AutoMapper.NET
Category
ecosystem
Workaround
hack
Stage
build
Freshness
persistent
Scope
single_lib
Upstream
open
Recurring
Yes
Buyer Type
team
Maintainer
active

Sources

Collection History

Query: “What are the most common pain points with C# for developers in 2025?”4/5/2026

most of the time, AutoMapper ends up getting in our way. Even AutoMapper's author recommends not to use it if we're mapping more than 80% of our fields by hand. But anyway, we use it even when we shouldn't.

Created: 4/5/2026Updated: 4/5/2026