Prisma ORM v6.16.0: Rust-free ORM and driver adapters are GA

Eight months ago, we published our ORM manifesto with the first hint that we’re going to remove the Rust-based query engine from Prisma ORM:

We’re addressing this by migrating Prisma’s core logic from Rust to TypeScript and redesigning the ORM to make customization and extension easier.

After a lot of hard work and feedback from the community, we’re incredibly excited to share that the migration has been completed and you can now use Prisma ORM without its Rust engine in your production apps. 🎉 This is a major milestone in the history of Prisma ORM and comes with a lot of benefits:

Lower bundle size
Faster queries (check out our latest benchmarks)
Lower CPU footprint
Less deployment complexity
Easier to make open-source contributions

… and overall a much better DX since you don’t need to worry about the extra binary in your generated Prisma Client code any more.

Learn how to get started with your favorite database in the docs.

🥳 New ESM-first `prisma-client` generator is Generally Available

Another major milestone has been achieved in this release: The new, flexible and ESM-first prisma-client generator is ready for production too. Here’s a quick overview of its main benefits:

No more magic generation into node_modules; generated code is fully under control by the developer
ESM-compatible by default
Flexible configuration for specific runtimes (Node.js, Deno, Bun, Cloudflare, …)

generator client {
  // Required
  provider = "prisma-client"
  output   = "../src/generated/prisma"

  // Optional
  engineType             = "client"
  runtime                = "nodejs"
  moduleFormat           = "esm"
  generatedFileExtension = "ts"
  importFileExtension    = "ts"
}

⚠️ Deprecating the `postgresqlExtensions` Preview feature

We’re deprecating the postgresqlExtensions Preview feature. Note that this doesn’t mean that you can’t use extensions with Prisma ORM any more. Instead of setting the Preview feature, you can install extensions manually with a customized migration via the --create-only flag:

npx prisma migrate dev --name add-extension --create-only

You can then install an extension with plain SQL in the newly created, empty migration file:

CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS "pgcrypto";

⚡️ Prisma ORM beats Drizzle in type checking performance

Runtime performance is not the only performance category that matters. In fact, when it comes to DX, which is close to our heart at Prisma, type checking performance is equally important: if your TypeScript types become too complex and the compiler needs to do too much work (e.g. inferring types), it may slow down your editor, lead to laggy auto-completion or prevent jump-to-definition from working.

We've worked with TypeScript expert David Blass to find ways for improving the type checking performance in Prisma ORM and created benchmarks comparing the type checking performance with Drizzle.

🔐 Manage OAuth apps in Prisma Console

In Prisma Console, you can now manage all of the 3rd party applications that you’ve granted access to perform actions on behalf of yourself in your Prisma Console account. Find the 🧩 Integrations tab in the sidenav to see which applications currently have access.

If you're creating OAuth apps to offer Prisma Postgres to your own users, consider becoming an official partner! As a partner, you'll be eligible to dedicated partner plans giving you special pricing offers to support your growth!

📣 Rust-free Prisma ORM with Prisma Accelerate and Prisma Postgres

With this release, the Rust-free Prisma ORM (Query Compiler) can now be used together with Prisma Postgres and also Prisma Accelerate. This means you can take advantage of connection pooling and caching while using the new TypeScript-based ORM architecture.

To enable it, update your Prisma schema:

generator client {
  provider   = "prisma-client"
  output     = "../src/generated/prisma"
  engineType = "client"
}

We’d love for you to try this out and share your feedback as we prepare for General Availability. Please open an issue on GitHub if you encounter any problems or have suggestions.

🤝 Enterprise support

Thousands of teams use Prisma and many of them already tap into our Enterprise & Agency Support Program for hands-on help with everything from schema integrations and performance tuning to security and compliance.

With this program you also get priority issue triage and bug fixes, expert scalability advice, and custom training so that your Prisma-powered apps stay rock-solid at any scale. Learn more or join: https://prisma.io/enterprise.