Drizzle ORM vs Vitess

At a Glance

Drizzle ORM

Vitess

Drizzle ORM

Pros

Query performance is very close to raw SQL because there's no separate query engine — it compiles directly to SQL strings+173
The schema definition in TypeScript gives you type-safe queries without the overhead of a separate binary or language+159
Bundle size is tiny compared to Prisma, which matters a lot when you're deploying to Cloudflare Workers with strict size limits+148
You write SQL-like syntax that maps one-to-one with what hits the database, so debugging unexpected queries is much easier+134
Supports multiple databases including Postgres, MySQL, and SQLite with the same API — useful for monorepos with different environments+112

Database

Prisma vs Drizzle

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Cons

Documentation has gaps and some advanced use cases require reading GitHub issues or the source code to understand+108
The ORM is still relatively young and some features like soft deletes and complex relations require more boilerplate than Prisma+97
Error messages when queries fail can be cryptic and don't point to the line in your code that caused the problem+81
No GUI like Prisma Studio — you need a separate tool like TablePlus or pgAdmin to inspect and edit data visually+76