better-drizzle vs Prisma

If you know Prisma Client, most of better-drizzle will look familiar: findMany, where, include, select, upsert, _count. The difference is underneath. better-drizzle reads your Drizzle schema, compiles every call to a Drizzle query, and runs it on the driver you chose.

Short answer

Choose better-drizzle when you want Prisma-like ergonomics but prefer Drizzle's model: the schema is TypeScript, there is no generate step, and raw SQL stays a first-class tool on the same connection.

Choose Prisma when you want its full toolchain from one vendor: its schema language, migrations, Studio, and the API surface listed under what Prisma has.

How the calls map

The same query in both:

const authors = await prisma.user.findMany({
	where: { active: true, posts: { some: { published: true } } },
	include: {
		posts: { where: { published: true }, orderBy: { id: 'desc' }, take: 3 },
		_count: { select: { posts: true } },
	},
	take: 10,
});

const authors = await client.users.findMany({
	where: { active: true, posts: { some: { published: true } } },
	include: {
		posts: { where: { published: true }, orderBy: { id: 'desc' }, take: 3 },
		_count: { select: { posts: true } },
	},
	take: 10,
});

Model names come from your Drizzle schema keys (users, posts), not from Prisma model names (user, post).

What is different

• Schema: Drizzle tables and defineRelations in TypeScript. There is no separate schema language and no generate step; types update as you edit the schema.
• SQL-first: every read has .explain(), filters accept Drizzle sql fragments, and raw Drizzle runs on the same connection and inside the same transaction.
• Drivers: the Drizzle driver you already use for PostgreSQL, MySQL, or SQLite. better-drizzle wraps the client and does not open its own connection.
• Bulk writes: upsertMany (one native upsert per batch) and updateEach (one UPDATE ... CASE for rows with different values).
• Row locks: lock: { mode: 'update' } on reads, on PostgreSQL and MySQL.
• Plugins in the package: soft delete, timestamps, tenant isolation, read cache, UUID ids, Zod, and guardrails.
• Not-found writes: update and delete return null; add .throw() to get an error.

What Prisma has that better-drizzle does not

• Migrations: better-drizzle has none. Use drizzle-kit (generate, migrate, push) for migrations, and drizzle-kit studio to browse data.
• Nested creates: relation writes are connect, disconnect, and set on existing rows. There is no nested create or connectOrCreate; create the related row first, inside a transaction.
• Aggregates: no aggregate, groupBy, _sum, or _avg. Use the Drizzle query builder for those.
• distinct and omit: not supported; use select to choose fields.
• Batch transactions: $transaction([...]) with an array has no equivalent; use the callback form.
• Other databases: no MongoDB, SQL Server, or CockroachDB support. better-drizzle supports PostgreSQL, MySQL, and SQLite.

See limitations for everything better-drizzle leaves to raw Drizzle.

Next steps

• Migrating from Prisma, step by step
• better-drizzle vs Drizzle
• Getting started