Prisma vs PlanetScale

At a Glance

Prisma

PlanetScale

Prisma

No features listed.

PlanetScale

Prisma

Pros

The schema definition language generates migrations, types, and a query client — it's the closest thing to a full ORM DX that TypeScript has+191
Auto-completion in VS Code for Prisma queries is genuinely the best ORM IDE experience I've used in any language+167
Type-safe queries eliminate an entire category of runtime errors that would otherwise only surface in production+154
The Prisma Studio GUI lets non-technical teammates browse and edit data without learning SQL or touching the database directly+138
Migration history tracked as SQL files in version control means your database evolution is always reviewable and auditable+119

Database

Prisma vs Drizzle

Database

Supabase vs Firebase vs PlanetScale

Database

PlanetScale vs Neon

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Cons

Prisma Client performance under heavy load is noticeably slower than raw SQL or lighter ORMs like Drizzle due to the query engine overhead+162
The query engine is a binary that has to be downloaded per platform — this causes deployment issues with exotic architectures and Lambda layers+141
Complex queries that Prisma can't express force you to drop into raw SQL, which breaks the type-safety you were relying on+127
Migration conflicts in teams with multiple developers working on the schema simultaneously are painful to resolve manually+89

PlanetScale

Pros

Branching model for database schema changes means you never run a raw ALTER TABLE in production again — a game changer for team workflows+183
Zero-downtime schema migrations are solved by default — no more 3am maintenance windows for adding a column+162
Vitess under the hood means it handles enormous write throughput that would kill a vanilla Postgres setup+147
The query insights dashboard identifies slow queries with execution plans before they become production incidents+109

Cons

They killed the free tier in 2024 and the cheapest plan is $39/mo — hard to justify for early-stage projects that might not survive+198
It's MySQL not Postgres, which cuts you off from a huge ecosystem of Postgres-native tools, extensions, and hiring pool+176
Foreign key constraints aren't supported because of the sharding model — you have to enforce referential integrity in application code+152
Prisma support works but you lose some ORM features due to the missing FK support, and you'll hit confusing errors if you're not aware+91