Instead of Prisma ORM: Drizzle ORM

Why Drizzle ORM is better

• Schemas are TypeScript files, so types flow straight from the schema into queries. Prisma uses its own schema language and needs prisma generate to rebuild its client after every model change.
• Queries mirror SQL with select, from, leftJoin and where, so if you know SQL you know Drizzle. A relational query API is there when you want nested results.
• Drizzle has zero dependencies and is built for serverless runtimes, with drivers for Neon, PlanetScale, Supabase, Bun SQL and others.
• Migrations are SQL files you can read and edit, and drizzle-kit push applies schema changes straight to the database while prototyping.
• It is now more widely installed. npm counted 130,172,114 downloads of drizzle-orm in the month to early November 2026, against 74,665,768 for @prisma/client.

When to keep Prisma ORM

Keep Prisma if your team values its schema language, Prisma Studio and its migration workflow, or uses Prisma Postgres. Prisma 7 rebuilt the client in TypeScript, which Prisma says gives 90% smaller bundles and 3x faster queries, so the old complaints about engine size and edge deployment largely no longer apply.

Switching

It is a rewrite of the data layer, not the database. drizzle-kit pull introspects your existing database and writes a Drizzle schema, so tables and data stay where they are. Every Prisma Client call then has to be rewritten as a Drizzle query, and migrations move to drizzle-kit. Most teams port one module at a time while both clients point at the same database.

Watch out

Drizzle 1.0 is still a release candidate in November 2026, and the upgrade from v0 changes the relational query API, so expect some churn. Its SQL-like style means writing joins yourself, which gives more control but takes more code than Prisma's nested queries. The project is run by the small Drizzle Team company.

Also worth a look

• Kysely A type-safe SQL query builder rather than a full ORM; pick it if you want typed SQL and nothing else.

More newer, better libraries, runtimes and developer tools

• Moment.js →, use date-fns
• Lodash →, use es-toolkit
• Axios →, use Ky
• Redux →, use Zustand
• styled-components →, use Tailwind CSS
• ImageMagick →, use libvips
• Beautiful Soup →, use selectolax