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prisma
orm
TypeScript2018–2026
prisma / orm

orm

The Prisma ORM: write your application in TypeScript with human-readable queries instead of SQL. Host your database on Prisma Postgres and your app on Prisma Compute.

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49Distinct people
74Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
47.7KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

The Prisma ORM: write your application in TypeScript with human-readable queries instead of SQL. Host your database on Prisma Postgres and your app on Prisma Compute.

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

I love Prisma and am a huge fan of Nexus[1] in particular. But it's interesting that you mention transactions as Prisma does not yet support long running transactions[2]. I…

string used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 10:49:33 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year74 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2018-12-03 19:57:14 UTC to 2026-09-16 17:43:54 UTC.

0510152018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments20182019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 6 mentions; 0 submissions, 6 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 16 mentions; 1 submissions, 15 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 10 mentions; 0 submissions, 10 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 11 mentions; 1 submissions, 10 comments20222023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 14 mentions; 2 submissions, 12 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 0 submissions, 5 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 8 mentions; 2 submissions, 6 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC606
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC16115
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC10010
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC11110
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC14212
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC505
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC826
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202

What Hacker News says

10 sources
nikolasburk·May 20, 2021
This looks really cool!, congrats for the launch! I noticed you're using Sequelize as an ORM for the Node.js version and was wondering if you evaluated other libraries for that. I work at Prisma [1] and we're building a new kind of ORM for Node.js and TypeScript. We've also seen that many library authors (e.g. KeystoneJS, RedwoodJS, Blitz, Amplication, Wasp, ...) [2] and fullstack templates like Bedrock [3] are picking Prisma as their ORM instead of tools like Sequelize, TypeORM or lower-level libraries like knex.js. I'm just curious to learn whether you were aware of Prisma and what made you pick Sequelize for this project in case you evaluated other options too :) [1] https://github.com/prisma/prisma [2] https://www.prisma.io/blog/prisma-the-complete-orm-inw24qjea... [3] http://bedrock.mxstbr.com/
In Show HN: Instantly generate code for your Django/Node starter app, ORM and APIs
nikolasburk·Apr 21, 2021
Transactions are supported in Prisma, see this guide in our docs [1]. I guess the post refers to our opinionated stance on "long-running transactions" which Prisma indeed does not at the moment. The best resources to learn about this are on GitHub [2] and our blog [3]. [1] https://www.prisma.io/docs/guides/performance-and-optimizati... [2] https://github.com/prisma/prisma/issues/1844 [3] https://www.prisma.io/blog/how-prisma-supports-transactions-...
In Prisma – ORM for Node.js and TypeScript
nikolasburk·Apr 21, 2021
This is a pretty extensive list! Are all of these points are full blockers for you or are there individual points that you care more about while others might be rather "nice to have"? If most of them are real blockers, you probably shouldn't use Prisma [1], and that's ok :) Prisma certainly is not perfect and whether you should use it depends on your project and individual requirements. What I can tell you is that we are shipping releases [2] with new features and improvements every two weeks. We are also very eager to learn about more use cases that people want to accomplish with Prisma. The best way to bring these to our attention is by commenting on existing GitHub issues and creating new ones if the one for your use case doesn't exist yet. This helps us prioritze and implement these new features. We also have a roadmap [3] where you c
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an see all the features that we are currently working on. Hope that helps for now! [1] https://www.prisma.io/docs/concepts/overview/should-you-use-... [2] https://github.com/prisma/prisma/releases [3] http://pris.ly/roadmap
In Prisma – ORM for Node.js and TypeScript
subsection1h·Apr 21, 2021
My team experimented with Prisma, and we ended up deciding to continue using raw SQL. Each of us has 10-20 years of experience writing SQL for PostgreSQL, so it wasn't a surprise that we decided against using an ORM yet again. But Prisma is probably the best ORM for Node.js that we've tried. For anyone who uses PostgreSQL and is interested in Prisma, check out the following message, which has a section that includes a list of features that were deemed out-of-scope (e.g., bulk upserts): https://github.com/prisma/prisma/issues/4998#issuecomment-76...
In Prisma – ORM for Node.js and TypeScript
abaldwin99·Apr 21, 2021
I'm completely perplexed at some of the functionality that's absent in Prisma? I'm coming from the Rails/Django world for reference. Can anyone help me understand if I'm out in left field or does this technology only cover basic use cases? - No supported way to do a case-insensitive sorting. https://github.com/prisma/prisma/issues/5068 - Can’t sort by an aggregate value like user’s post count. https://github.com/prisma/prisma/issues/3821 - Can’t control between inner/left join. - Can’t do subqueries. - Migration rollbacks are experimental maybe unsupported now? At least I only see mention in Github issues and not in the docs. - Transactions appear to expect a series of queries? It doesn’t look like you can execute any app code during a transaction? - No support for pessimistic row locking e.g. SELECT… FOR UPDATE ? - No wa
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y to mixin raw query partials like `where('name ILIKE ?')`. You either need to write the whole query raw or not. - Validations are done at the database level. - Complex validations seem tricky to write in this format - No built-in way to make clean user-facing validation messages. - You can’t check that a model instance is valid without just trying to insert it into the database - The official documented validation example has you connecting via psql and adding a constraint? - So following the offical example my validations aren’t documented in the codebase via a model or a migration? - Also they don’t have a validation example documented if you’re using MySQL instead of Postgres? - Cascading deletes are handled the same way as validations. As in Prisma basically does nothing other than document how to implement it yourself outside of the library. - No model methods. I guess that's not a surprised because it's "not an ORM". A model really is just a data mapping? Anyways it seems like you would end up rolling your own wrapper around this and there's no recommendations on standardized architecture. - No callbacks. These have been controversial at times so are teams using Prisma writing something akin to "services" instead? - Syntax nitpick but one of these is vulnerable to a SQL injection and it seems really easy for a new developer to get mixed up? - prisma.$queryRaw(`SELECT \* FROM User WHERE email = ${email}`); - prisma.$queryRaw`SELECT \* FROM User WHERE email = ${email}`; - No way of batch loading like Active Records’s find_in_batches / find_each. All objects are just loaded into memory? - No way of hooking into queries for instrumentation. e.g. ActiveSupport::Notifications.subscribe FYI - This is after fairly brief research. Not guaranteed 100% accurate.
In Prisma – ORM for Node.js and TypeScript
nikolasburk·Mar 16, 2021
> Prisma (and Prisma Migrate) can be self hosted, so no corporate boundaries needs to be crossed. Just to clarify: Prisma is an open-source ORM [1] that's available via an npm package, so there really isn't a component that needs to be "hosted" here. (You might be referring to Prisma 1 which came with its own DB proxy server that was run via Docker, but Prisma 2 [2] doesn't have this Docker container any more and is "just" an npm library). [1] https://github.com/prisma/prisma [2] https://www.prisma.io/blog/announcing-prisma-2-n0v98rzc8br1
In Hassle-Free Database Migrations with Prisma Migrate
nikolasburk·Feb 10, 2021
Hey, Nikolas from the Prisma team here! As of today, we indeed only support relational databases (Postgres, MySQL, SQL Server, SQLite) but we are already working on a connector for MongoDB[1] and plan to expand to more DBs in the future, here's the open issue to support DynamoDB[2]. Hopefully Prisma becomes an option for you once we support your favorite DBs! [1]: https://www.notion.so/prismaio/Prisma-Roadmap-50766227b77946... [2]: https://github.com/prisma/prisma/issues/1676
In Launch HN: Wasp (YC W21) – DSL for building full-stack web apps

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