Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Postgres.js VS Prisma GraphQL API

Compare Postgres.js VS Prisma GraphQL API and see what are their differences

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Postgres.js logo Postgres.js

Postgres.js - The Fastest full featured PostgreSQL client for Node.js - porsager/postgres

Prisma GraphQL API logo Prisma GraphQL API

Prisma helps modern applications access and manipulate data through a unified data layer
  • Postgres.js Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-29
  • Prisma GraphQL API Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-02-05

Prisma is an open-source database toolkit. It replaces traditional ORMs and makes database access easy with an auto-generated query builder for TypeScript & Node.js.

Postgres.js features and specs

  • Performance
    Postgres.js is designed to provide fast queries and optimized performance using native calls to PostgreSQL.
  • Lightweight
    The library is lightweight, with minimal dependencies, which can lead to easier maintenance and deployment.
  • Asynchronous
    It supports asynchronous operations using modern JavaScript Promise-based syntax, improving code readability and maintainability.
  • Support for PostgreSQL Features
    It includes support for a wide range of PostgreSQL features such as transactions, streaming, and logical replication.
  • Community Support
    Being an open-source project, it has community contributions and support, which can help in getting issues resolved and features updated.

Possible disadvantages of Postgres.js

  • Learning Curve
    Developers who are new to this library might face a learning curve as it might differ from other more commonly used PostgreSQL libraries.
  • Maturity
    Compared to older libraries like node-postgres (pg), it might lack the extensive documentation and long-term usage by large projects.
  • Niche Use Case
    May not be the best fit for applications that require a middleware ORM or the abstractions provided by traditional ORMs.
  • Smaller Ecosystem
    While it is growing, the ecosystem of third-party tools and plugins is not as large as those for some established libraries.

Prisma GraphQL API features and specs

  • Type-Safe API
    Prisma provides a type-safe API, reducing the likelihood of type-related errors during development and improving the developer experience.
  • Auto-Generated CRUD Operations
    Prisma automatically generates CRUD operations for your database models, which can save a significant amount of development time.
  • Flexible Data Modeling
    Prisma supports a flexible data modeling approach with its Prisma Schema Language (PSL), making it easier to design and iterate on your database schema.
  • Database Agnostic
    Prisma works with various databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, MongoDB), providing a consistent API regardless of the underlying database technology.
  • Real-Time Capabilities
    Prisma supports real-time event-driven architectures, enabling features like subscriptions in GraphQL for real-time data updates.
  • Strong Community and Documentation
    Prisma has an active community and extensive documentation, which can help developers resolve issues and learn best practices.

Possible disadvantages of Prisma GraphQL API

  • Complex Migrations
    Schema migrations can become complex and require careful planning, especially for large, existing databases.
  • Learning Curve
    There can be a steep learning curve for developers who are new to the Prisma ecosystem and GraphQL in general.
  • Performance Overhead
    Using an ORM like Prisma can introduce a performance overhead compared to raw SQL queries, which might be a concern for performance-critical applications.
  • Limited Customization
    While Prisma covers most use cases, there might be scenarios where custom queries and operations are necessary, which might not be straightforward to implement.
  • Dependency on Prisma
    By adopting Prisma, you become dependent on it for your data layer. If Prisma fails to keep pace with critical updates or your needs evolve beyond its capabilities, this could be a limitation.
  • Backend-Only
    Prisma is currently backend-only and does not provide solutions for frontend integrations out-of-the-box, necessitating additional libraries or custom code for complete full-stack solutions.

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Postgres.js and Prisma GraphQL API)
Developer Tools
30 30%
70% 70
Project Management
0 0%
100% 100
Web Frameworks
100 100%
0% 0
GUI Frameworks
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Prisma GraphQL API should be more popular than Postgres.js. It has been mentiond 68 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Postgres.js mentions (20)

  • Neon Is Generally Available: Serverless Postgres
    I want to use this as a chance to bring attention to a GitHub issue that I think would help reduce friction for Neon: https://github.com/neondatabase/neon/issues/4989. Having run a local dev environment connected to Neon and tests connected to Neon got in our way of adoption. We'd prefer to develop and run tests against a regular Postgres localhost database. To the PMs of Neon, put yourself in the shoes of a new... - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • Drizzle is just as unready for prime-time as Prisma, what else is there?
    I'd push you to consider using postgres, slonik or similar for database queries. With these libraries, you just write SQL, but they perform input sanitization for you. So you can safely write:. Source: over 1 year ago
  • We migrated to SQL. Our biggest learning? Don't use Prisma ORM
    There's also https://kysely.dev/ but personally I handwrite my queries with https://github.com/porsager/postgres for flexibility and performance most orms use node-pg lib which has shit performance. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Relational is more than SQL
    When viewed as a DSL for set theory, views, CTEs, set-returning functions, et al are indeed proper first-class query abstractions. When viewed through the lens of general purpose imperative or functional programming languages, it's easy to see how it can be seen as falling short. I'll admit much of the tooling and driver APIs leave a lot to be desired. Some tools do make good efforts though such as nested... - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Is ORM still an anti-pattern?
    Demonstrate how easily and accidentally one can make an SQL injection with these: https://github.com/porsager/postgres. - Source: Hacker News / almost 2 years ago
View more

Prisma GraphQL API mentions (68)

  • When Embedded AuthN Meets Embedded AuthZ - Building Multi-Tenant Apps With Better-Auth and ZenStack
    While better-auth solves the problem of determining a user's identity and roles, ZenStack continues from there and uses such information to control what actions the user can perform on a piece of data. ZenStack is built above Prisma ORM and extends Prisma's power with flexible access control and automatic CRUD API. Since better-auth has built-in integration with Prisma, the two can make a perfect combination for... - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Building Multi-Tenant Apps Using StackAuth's "Teams" and Next.js
    Prisma: the ORM that we use to talk to the database. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Why I love Rust for tokenising and parsing
    > If you don't mind me asking, which companies? Or how do you get into this industry within an industry? I'd really love to work on some programming language implementations professionally (although maybe that's just because I've built them non-professionally until now), You do not need to write programming languages to need parsers and lexers. My last company was Prisma (https://prisma.io) where we had our own... - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago
  • Rendering Prisma Queries With React Table: The Low-Code Way
    Tables are most commonly used to render database query results — in modern times, the output of an ORM. In this post, I'll introduce a way of connecting Prisma - the most popular TypeScript ORM, to React Table, with the help of React Query and ZenStack. You'll be amazed by how little code you need to write to render a full-fledged table UI. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • Why is prisma orm bad?
    If you're unfamiliar, Prisma is a well-known TypeScript ORM for PostgreSQL and MongoDB. It was the first ORM I learned to use, and this decision led to some difficulties later on. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Postgres.js and Prisma GraphQL API, you can also consider the following products

SQLPage - Build SQL-only websites - Build full web applications using just SQL queries

Nintex - Cloud-based digital workflow management automation platform

Gio UI - Gio is an open source library for creating portable, immediate mode GUI programs for Android, iOS, Linux, Windows, macOS.

dapulse - Lead by showing your team the Big Picture. Get everyone working together on what's important.

JDBI - See this.

ampEducator - ampEducator is a web-based Student Information System (SIS) specially made for public and private higher education institutions.