Drizzle ORM vs Turso

At a Glance

Drizzle ORM

Turso

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

Database

Neon vs PlanetScale vs Turso

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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

Turso

Pros

Pricing is genuinely cheap — the free tier includes 9GB storage and 500 databases which covers most indie projects indefinitely+141
Edge replication puts a read replica close to every user without any configuration, which makes global apps feel instant+128
SQLite is so simple that onboarding a new developer takes minutes — there's no server to configure or connection string to debug+103
The embedded replica feature lets you run the database in-process for zero-latency reads in serverless environments+87
Drizzle ORM integration is first-class and the setup docs are the best in the SQLite ecosystem right now+76

Cons

SQLite's limited ALTER TABLE support means schema migrations are more awkward than with Postgres — you often have to recreate tables+118
Write latency goes to the primary region, so users far from your primary location will see slower write performance than reads+94
Multi-tenant setups with hundreds of databases sound great in theory but managing that many separate databases adds operational complexity+83
The ecosystem is still young and you'll hit undocumented edge cases that require digging through GitHub issues to resolve+71