Entity Framework Core vs. Entity Framework 6

Entity Framework Core

Entity Framework Core (EF Core) is Microsoft's newest object-relational mapper for .NET. It works with SQL Server / SQL Azure, SQLite, Azure Cosmos DB, MySQL, PostgreSQL and many other databases.

If you're creating a brand new business layer project, you should choose Entity Framework Core because it's where Microsoft is putting all of its future efforts for data access in .NET.

Unless specified otherwise, in this Dev Guide, whenever we refer to "Entity Framework", we mean Entity Framework Core.

Entity Framework 6

Entity Framework 6 is an object-relational mapper for .NET that works with the full .NET Framework, or .NET Core. It's a stable and mature product, but is no longer being actively developed, so you shouldn't choose it for new business layer projects.

For a thorough discussion of the differences between EF Core and EF 6, check out the Microsoft docs:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/ef/efcore-and-ef6/