5 Reasons to Choose Drizzle ORM Over Traditional JavaScript ORMs

Mon, 21 Jul 2025 13:47:00 +0000
typescript, JavaScript, ORM, Drizzle

The TypeScript ecosystem is rapidly expanding, bringing along improved and more secure replacements for traditional JavaScript ORMs (Object Relational Mapping). Among the standout solutions are Drizzle and Prisma. While both enable developers to interact with databases in a type-safe way, they represent different philosophies.

In this article, I will focus on 5 reasons why Drizzle ORM is worth considering, especially regarding:

performance,

full control over queries,

clean TypeScript architecture.

1. First-Class Developer Experience

Drizzle ORM is designed for developers who want full visibility and control over their data layer without giving up on developer comfort.

It offers:

excellent IntelliSense support, including auto-completion, type inference, and inline documentation,

compile-time type safety, meaning that if the query is wrong, TypeScript will give a warning,

no need to generate a client, which means fewer moving parts and better iteration speed.

As for the last point, unlike ORMs like Prisma, Drizzle does not require a separate step to generate a client library from the schema. In Prisma, the database schema is defined in a .prisma file, and then, to create a custom TypeScript client, it is necessary to run the command:

npx prisma generate

That client becomes an interface to the database and must be regenerated whenever the schema changes.

Another popular library in the TypeScript ecosystem is Kysely. It is a lightweight and type-safe SQL query builder that also aims to improve developer experience. Similar to Prisma, Kysely requires a separate step to bring type information into the code. Developers usually define interfaces manually or use external tools like kysely-codegen, which introspects the database schema and generates TypeScript definitions based on actual tables:

Step 1: define database interface,

Step 2: generate database schema type definitions.

This means that while Kysely offers great flexibility and strong typings, it also introduces additional steps and tooling to keep types in sync with the database. The schema is often defined outside the application code and maintaining that connection can be error-prone or lead to inconsistent typings if the generation step is skipped.

Drizzle skips this entirely. Instead of relying on schema files and code generation, Drizzle lets developers define database schema directly in TypeScript, and queries are written against that schema using native TypeScript expressions. There is no intermediate client layer, no compilation step, and no risk of types getting out of sync with the actual schema.

This results in:

faster iteration (developers don't have to wait for the client to be generated),

simpler toolchains,

fewer bugs due to desynchronized schemas and clients,

easier onboarding for new developers (because what they see in the code is what they get).

Drizzle’s approach makes the developer experience more transparent, more direct, and better integrated with modern TypeScript workflows.

Here is how a table definition might look:

import { pgTable, uuid, varchar, timestamp } from 'drizzle-orm/pg-core';

export const users = pgTable('users', {
  id: uuid('id').primaryKey().defaultRandom(),
  email: varchar('email').notNull().unique()
  createdAt: timestamp('created_at')
.notNull()
.defaultNow(),
});

And this is what a query against the schema might look like:

import { eq }...