Databases & ORMs
Postgres won. What differs now is the operational shape around it — serverless or always-on, branching or not, how cold starts are handled — and which type-safe layer you use to query it.
6tools
- Drizzle ORMA TypeScript ORM that stays close to the SQL you would have writtenorm.drizzle.team
- NeonServerless Postgres that branches like Gitneon.com
- PlanetScaleMySQL and Postgres at scale, with schema changes that do not lock the tableplanetscale.com
- PrismaSchema-first ORM with the best migration and studio toolingprisma.io
- SupabasePostgres with auth, storage, realtime and generated APIs on topsupabase.com
- TursoSQLite at the edge, and a database per tenant without the billturso.tech
Head to head
Databases & ORMs, compared
The last two entries are ORMs, not databases — they sit on top of the rest.
| Tool | Engine | Scales to zero | Branching | Notable for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drizzle ORM | Any SQL (ORM) | — | — | Thin, no runtime engine |
| Neon | PostgreSQL | Yes | Yes | A branch per pull request |
| PlanetScale | MySQL, PostgreSQL | No | Yes | Non-blocking schema changes |
| Prisma | Any SQL (ORM) | — | — | Migrations and Studio |
| Supabase | PostgreSQL | Pauses on free tier | Yes | Auth, storage and realtime |
| Turso | SQLite (libSQL) | Yes | Yes | A database per tenant |