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Sasith Warnaka
Sasith Warnaka

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🚀 Best ORM for NestJS in 2025: Drizzle ORM vs TypeORM vs Prisma

#drizzle #typeorm #prisma #nestjs

When building a NestJS backend, one of the first architectural decisions is:

👉 Which ORM (Object-Relational Mapper) should I use?

The ORM defines how your application talks to the database — directly impacting performance, scalability, and developer experience (DX).

This article compares the three most popular ORMs for NestJS in 2025:

  • TypeORM – classic, decorator-based ORM
  • Prisma – modern, schema-first ORM with tooling
  • Drizzle ORM – lightweight, SQL-first, TypeScript-native

And finally, we’ll decide which one is the best choice for high-performance NestJS projects in 2025.

⚡ TypeORM – The Classic Choice

Pros

  • Mature and widely used in the NestJS ecosystem
  • Supports PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite, MongoDB
  • Familiar OOP-style with decorators (@Entity, @Column)
  • Built-in relations, eager/lazy loading, cascading
  • Strong NestJS integration

Cons

  • Performance overhead due to heavy abstraction
  • Migrations can be buggy (schema drift issues)
  • TypeScript support is weak for relations
  • Lots of “magic” → harder debugging

Performance

Slower in complex queries due to reflection and metadata.

Lazy loading often causes the N+1 query problem.

✅ Best for teams from Hibernate/Entity Framework background or those who want auto-managed relations.

⚡ Prisma – The DX Darling

Pros

  • Schema-first approach (schema.prisma)
  • Auto-generates fully typed client → incredible DX
  • Rich ecosystem: Prisma Studio, Migrate, Data Browser
  • Great documentation & community

Cons

  • Performance overhead from Rust query engine
  • Transactions are limited (interactive mode)
  • Limited flexibility for raw SQL
  • Can be harder to tune for high-performance queries

Performance

⚠️ Faster than TypeORM, but still slower than SQL-focused builders like Drizzle.

✅ Best for teams who value developer experience and fast prototyping.

⚡ Drizzle ORM – The Performance Leader

Pros

  • TypeScript-first, SQL-first – schema and queries are fully typed
  • Lightweight – no runtime reflection
  • Near raw SQL performance
  • Safe migrations with drizzle-kit
  • Strong inference → safer refactors
  • Great with serverless DBs (Turso, Neon, Planetscale)

Cons

  • Newer, smaller ecosystem than Prisma/TypeORM
  • Requires developers to know SQL concepts
  • No lazy-loading → explicit joins only

Performance

Drizzle is currently the fastest ORM for NestJS apps in 2025.

It compiles queries down to SQL with minimal overhead.

✅ Best for performance-sensitive apps (real-time systems, analytics, fintech).

⚡ Benchmark & Feature Comparison

Feature / ORM TypeORM Prisma Drizzle ORM
Performance ❌ Slowest ⚠️ Medium ✅ Fastest
Type Safety ⚠️ Partial ✅ Excellent ✅ Excellent
Migrations ⚠️ Buggy ✅ Good ✅ Excellent
Learning Curve ✅ Easy (OOP devs) ✅ Easy ⚠️ Needs SQL
Relations ✅ Built-in ✅ Declarative ⚠️ Manual
Ecosystem ✅ Mature ✅ Huge ⚠️ Growing
Best For Legacy/OOP DX-first teams Performance & Type Safety

⚡ NestJS Integration Examples

🟢 TypeORM 

@Module({
  imports: [
    TypeOrmModule.forRoot({
      type: 'postgres',
      url: process.env.DATABASE_URL,
      entities: [User, Post],
      synchronize: false,
    }),
    TypeOrmModule.forFeature([User, Post]),
  ],
})
export class AppModule {}
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🟣 Prisma 

@Injectable()
export class PrismaService extends PrismaClient 
  implements OnModuleInit {
  async onModuleInit() {
    await this.$connect();
  }
}

@Module({
  providers: [PrismaService],
  exports: [PrismaService],
})
export class PrismaModule {}
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🔵 Drizzle ORM 

import { drizzle } from "drizzle-orm/node-postgres";
import { Pool } from "pg";

const pool = new Pool({ connectionString: process.env.DATABASE_URL });
export const db = drizzle(pool);

@Module({
  providers: [{ provide: 'DB', useValue: db }],
  exports: ['DB'],
})
export class DatabaseModule {}
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⚡ Final Verdict – Best ORM for NestJS in 2025

  1. TypeORM → Best if you need decorator-style entities & auto-relations.
  2. Prisma → Best if you want fantastic DX & tooling.
  3. Drizzle ORM → Best if you care about performance, type safety, and migrations.

🏆 For most new NestJS projects in 2025, the winner is Drizzle ORM.

It combines raw SQL speed, strict TypeScript safety, and robust migrations → making it the future-proof choice for serious applications.

🎬 Conclusion

  • TypeORM is the legacy powerhouse, but struggles with performance.
  • Prisma is the most beginner-friendly with top DX.
  • Drizzle ORM is the best for modern, high-performance NestJS apps.

👉 If you’re starting a new project in 2025, choose Drizzle ORM for scalability and performance.

GitHub logo drizzle-team / drizzle-orm

Headless TypeScript ORM with a head. Runs on Node, Bun and Deno. Lives on the Edge and yes, it's a JavaScript ORM too 😅


Headless ORM for NodeJS, TypeScript and JavaScript 🚀

Website • Documentation • Twitter • Discord


What's Drizzle?

Drizzle is a modern TypeScript ORM developers wanna use in their next project It is lightweight at only ~7.4kb minified+gzipped, and it's tree shakeable with exactly 0 dependencies.

Drizzle supports every PostgreSQL, MySQL and SQLite database, including serverless ones like Turso, Neon, Xata, PlanetScale, Cloudflare D1, FlyIO LiteFS, Vercel Postgres, Supabase and AWS Data API. No bells and whistles, no Rust binaries, no serverless adapters, everything just works out of the box.

Drizzle is serverless-ready by design. It works in every major JavaScript runtime like NodeJS, Bun, Deno, Cloudflare Workers, Supabase functions, any Edge runtime, and even in browsers.
With Drizzle you can be fast out of the box and save time and costs while never introducing any data proxies into your…

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