How much does Prisma cost?

The ORM is free. The hosted platform is Free $0, Starter $10, Pro $49 and Business $129 per month, each including a request and operation allowance, after which you pay per million operations and per GB of storage.

Yes — Prisma ORM is always free and included on every plan, including the free one. The paid tiers buy Prisma Postgres and Prisma Compute, not the ORM.

How does Prisma count operations?

Every query your app runs against the database counts as one operation. Included volumes are 200k (Free), 1M (Starter), 10M (Pro) and 50M (Business) per month, with overage at $8, $2 and $1 per million respectively.

Does Prisma charge per user or for egress?

Neither. There are no seats, and Prisma Postgres data transfer is unlimited and included; paid plans also carry a hard spend limit that is on by default.

How much does Prisma cost?

Prisma publishes 4 plans: Free at $0/mo, Starter at $10/mo, Pro at $49/mo, Business at $129/mo. Every figure is read from the vendor's own pricing page; the pricing section above shows the source sentence for each tier.

Does Prisma have a free plan?

Yes. Prisma offers a free tier with limits; paid plans unlock higher usage or team features.

What are the main drawbacks of Prisma?

The trade-offs we noted: Generated client adds build weight; Complex SQL sometimes needs raw escape hatches; Extra abstraction layer to learn.

When should you not use Prisma?

Skip Prisma if: Your app is query-chatty: every single query is one billable operation, and overage on Starter is $8 per million against $2 on Pro and $1 on Business; You need HIPAA or GDPR commitments on the cheapest paid tier — those start at Pro ($49/month), and SOC 2 and ISO 27001 only at Business ($129/month); You want long backup history: daily backups are 7-day on Starter and Pro, reaching 30-day retention only on Business.

Developer Tools

Prisma

Type-safe ORM and data toolkit.

What it is

Prisma generates a fully typed client from your schema, so database queries are checked at compile time rather than failing at runtime. Compile-time checking against the schema catches a whole class of runtime failures before deploy, which is the main reason teams adopt it. The generated client and engine add weight, and complex SQL sometimes has to be written by hand anyway.

Prisma pricing

Prisma publishes 4 plans. Paid tiers start at $10/mo, and a free tier is listed alongside them.

Prisma plans and published prices, taken from the vendor’s pricing page.
Plan	Price	What the vendor’s page says
Free	$0/mo	Free $0/month: 1M compute requests, 360 GB-hours memory, 4 active vCPU-hours, 10 GB outbound bandwidth, 200k Postgres operations, 500 MB storage, 50 databases
Starter	$10/mo	Starter $10/month: 5M requests then $1 per million, 1M Postgres operations then $8 per million, 10 GB storage then $2.00/GB, 1,000 databases, 7-day daily backups
Pro	$49/mo	Pro $49/month: 20M requests, 10M operations then $2 per million, 50 GB storage then $1.50/GB, GDPR and HIPAA
Business	$129/mo	Business $129/month: 100M requests, 50M operations then $1 per million, 100 GB storage, 30-day backup retention, GDPR, HIPAA, SOC 2, ISO 27001

Prices read from the vendor's own pricing page on 2026-09-09. Vendors change plans without notice — check the source before you budget. Source

Key features

Typed client generation
Generates a client whose types follow the schema definition.
Migrations
Versions schema changes and applies them across environments.
Multi-database support
Targets the common relational databases from one schema language.

Strengths and trade-offs

What works well

Types match your schema without hand-written definitions
Migrations are versioned and readable
Good editor autocomplete

Where it falls short

Generated client adds build weight
Complex SQL sometimes needs raw escape hatches
Extra abstraction layer to learn

Who it is for

TypeScript teams that want database access checked by the compiler.

Pick it or skip it

Pick Prisma if

Teams that grow headcount faster than traffic — there are no seats, and deploys, preview branches and idle time do not add to the bill
Apps with quiet periods: an idle app scales to zero and costs nothing, and compute is metered per GB-hour and vCPU-hour
Anyone burned by surprise cloud bills — every paid plan has a hard spend limit switched on by default
Egress-heavy workloads on Prisma Postgres, where data transfer is unlimited and included rather than billed per GB

Skip it if

Your app is query-chatty: every single query is one billable operation, and overage on Starter is $8 per million against $2 on Pro and $1 on Business
You need HIPAA or GDPR commitments on the cheapest paid tier — those start at Pro ($49/month), and SOC 2 and ISO 27001 only at Business ($129/month)
You want long backup history: daily backups are 7-day on Starter and Pro, reaching 30-day retention only on Business
You only want the ORM — that part is free and needs no plan at all; these prices buy the hosted Postgres and compute platform

Our verdict

The typing genuinely prevents bugs. If your queries are unusual, expect to drop to raw SQL more than you would like.

Frequently asked questions

How much does Prisma cost?: The ORM is free. The hosted platform is Free $0, Starter $10, Pro $49 and Business $129 per month, each including a request and operation allowance, after which you pay per million operations and per GB of storage.
Is Prisma ORM free?: Yes — Prisma ORM is always free and included on every plan, including the free one. The paid tiers buy Prisma Postgres and Prisma Compute, not the ORM.
How does Prisma count operations?: Every query your app runs against the database counts as one operation. Included volumes are 200k (Free), 1M (Starter), 10M (Pro) and 50M (Business) per month, with overage at $8, $2 and $1 per million respectively.
Does Prisma charge per user or for egress?: Neither. There are no seats, and Prisma Postgres data transfer is unlimited and included; paid plans also carry a hard spend limit that is on by default.
How much does Prisma cost?: Prisma publishes 4 plans: Free at $0/mo, Starter at $10/mo, Pro at $49/mo, Business at $129/mo. Every figure is read from the vendor's own pricing page; the pricing section above shows the source sentence for each tier.
Does Prisma have a free plan?: Yes. Prisma offers a free tier with limits; paid plans unlock higher usage or team features.
Who is Prisma best for?: TypeScript teams that want database access checked by the compiler.
What are the main drawbacks of Prisma?: The trade-offs we noted: Generated client adds build weight; Complex SQL sometimes needs raw escape hatches; Extra abstraction layer to learn.
When should you not use Prisma?: Skip Prisma if: Your app is query-chatty: every single query is one billable operation, and overage on Starter is $8 per million against $2 on Pro and $1 on Business; You need HIPAA or GDPR commitments on the cheapest paid tier — those start at Pro ($49/month), and SOC 2 and ISO 27001 only at Business ($129/month); You want long backup history: daily backups are 7-day on Starter and Pro, reaching 30-day retention only on Business.

What we checked

Public APIOffers a documented API you can build against.Yes
Mobile appHas a native app for iOS or Android, not just a mobile website.No
Open source / self-hostableSource is open and the tool can be run on your own infrastructure.Yes
SSO (SAML)Supports SAML single sign-on on at least one plan.Yes

“Not checked” means exactly that — we have not verified it, and we do not guess.

Evidence and freshness

Status: Vendor pricing page verifiedReviewed: 2026-09-09

Prisma — Pricing ↗
Checked 2026-09-09 · Supports: Prisma ORM is always free and included in every plan, Free $0/month: 1M compute requests, 360 GB-hours memory, 4 active vCPU-hours, 10 GB outbound bandwidth, 200k Postgres operations, 500 MB storage, 50 databases, Starter $10/month: 5M requests then $1 per million, 1M Postgres operations then $8 per million, 10 GB storage then $2.00/GB, 1,000 databases, 7-day daily backups, Pro $49/month: 20M requests, 10M operations then $2 per million, 50 GB storage then $1.50/GB, GDPR and HIPAA, Business $129/month: 100M requests, 50M operations then $1 per million, 100 GB storage, 30-day backup retention, GDPR, HIPAA, SOC 2, ISO 27001, Compute metering on paid plans: $0.006 per GB-hour memory, $0.064 per active vCPU-hour, $0.025 per GB outbound bandwidth, Every query counts as one operation, and operations are what you pay for, No seats: deploys, preview branches, idle time and the number of people on your team never add to the bill; an idle app scales to zero, Prisma Postgres data transfer is unlimited and included; every paid plan has a hard spend limit on by default

Limit: Vendor pricing page was reviewed by an editor on this date; this record is not a ToolCompare benchmark. Prices and limits change.

Tools that do the same job as Prisma

Same job, different pricing. Verified starting price first.

Drizzle ORMFree

Browse all tools we track →

More Developer Tools tools: see the full Developer Tools category

Work at Prisma? Embed the verified-pricing badge

We read this pricing from Prisma’s own pricing page on 2026-09-09. The badge says that and nothing more: no rating, no payment. How the badge works

HTML

<a href="https://toolcompare.net/tools/prisma" title="Prisma pricing on ToolCompare"><img src="https://toolcompare.net/api/badge/prisma" alt="Prisma pricing verified by ToolCompare" width="291" height="28"></a>

Markdown (README, docs)

[![Prisma pricing verified by ToolCompare](https://toolcompare.net/api/badge/prisma)](https://toolcompare.net/tools/prisma)