pothos VS Prisma

Compare pothos vs Prisma and see what are their differences.

pothos

Pothos GraphQL is library for creating GraphQL schemas in typescript using a strongly typed code first approach (by hayes)

Prisma

Next-generation ORM for Node.js & TypeScript | PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, SQL Server, SQLite, MongoDB and CockroachDB (by prisma)
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pothos Prisma
24 444
2,244 37,328
- 1.2%
9.2 9.9
5 days ago about 18 hours ago
TypeScript TypeScript
ISC License Apache License 2.0
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

pothos

Posts with mentions or reviews of pothos. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-01-26.
  • When Do You Use Global Types in Your Project?
    1 project | /r/typescript | 26 Mar 2023
    A project I maintain Pothos uses a global namespace with a bunch of interfaces to allow plugins to extend interfaces defined in core or other plugins. This allows plugins to add new options and methods to objects and classes without the other packages needing to know anything about them.
  • Full-Stack GraphQL-APIs in TypeScript without codegen
    1 project | /r/nextjs | 16 Mar 2023
    I noticed this being shared around on Twitter the other day - pretty handy, as I'm currently trying to architect a similar experience for my job using Pathos and graphql-codegen.
  • Ask HN: What would be your stack if you are building an MVP today?
    47 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 26 Jan 2023
    - tRPC

    But I'd likely throw out Clerk a cheaper option:

    - Supertokens, and also since Supertokens is easy (lots of enthusiastic reports about it), has a managed solution (which is cheaper than the alternatives), is secure and scalable (rotating refresh tokens with JWTs), open source, has magic links, and the architecture of Supertokens would allow me to simply and quickly eject to self-hosting it if/when I'd eventually need to (if the app ever reaches mass-market scale).

    And I might throw out tRPC for the equivalent GraphQL experience (esp. if business strategy dictates I need a 3rd party API):

    - GQty.dev on the client, for inferred queries/mutations. For rapid dev speed. Simple code example: https://gqty.dev/docs/intro Then move to URQL or Relay at scale, or just skip GQty and go with URQL from the start (if scalability trumps dev speed).

    - Pothos http://pothos-graphql.dev on the server, for auto building the schema from your TS code (aka. code-first). Better than Nexus (e.g. Max Stoiber moved from Nexus to Pothos on his Bedrock starter template because Pothos is best in class: https://bedrock.mxstbr.com/tools/pothos/ ).

    And I might throw out NextJS (Webpack) for the equivalent experience in Vite:

    - vite-plugin-ssr, since both architectural control (libraries > frameworks) and Vite rocks. I'd likely then have to make solito-vite https://github.com/nandorojo/solito/discussions/157 to have a unified navigation between React Native and Web, but Solito is allegely tiny, so recreating it should be doable.

    (If doing all of these replacements, maybe starting from scratch would be easier than modifying create-universal-app ... That said, I think if someone made a starter repo with the above choices it would be a real killer!)

    Then I'd also likely use:

    - Vercel (and try their Edge Functions, for a serverless sweet v8 isolates experience without slow cold starts), or maybe Cloudflare Workers (cheaper, slightly more hassle?) for hosting.

    - Planetscale or Supabase for the DB. (Not brave enough to try EdgeDB or SurrealDB just yet, though EdgeDB is close..) Unless I had a specific use case where a more specialized/optimized DB would make sense.

    This stack should stick even post-MVP, as it's not only optimized for a solo developer but for scalability.

  • Real World Rust Backend For Web APIs (GraphQL / REST)
    8 projects | /r/rust | 24 Dec 2022
    Have you used Pothos? It's a way to make GraphQL schemas in TypeScript, in a type-safe way. So the creator of Prisma Client Rust is thinking about making a Pothos-style API based on the t builder pattern:
  • What to use with Apollo Server v4 to achieve type-safety?
    3 projects | /r/graphql | 19 Dec 2022
    I would recommend Pothos (https://pothos-graphql.dev/) as a more modern alternative to typegraphql or nexus.
  • Apollo Layoffs
    6 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 15 Dec 2022
    Depends on language, I've build GraphQL servers in a few, though mostly JavaScript and Python. For Python I used to use Graphene, these days I use Strawberry.

    For JavaScript, I originally used graphql-js and express-graphql, as these were the original libraries and I was a literal day 1 adopter. All the libraries are essentially just wrappers around graphql-js, so it's still viable to use directly. But for schema-building I now use Pothos (https://pothos-graphql.dev/), I'd probably use graphql-helix as the http layer (https://github.com/contra/graphql-helix).

  • Achieving end-to-end type safety in a modern JS GraphQL stack
    9 projects | dev.to | 24 Nov 2022
    Pothos is a breeze of fresh air when it comes to building GraphQL APIs. It is a library that lets you write code-first GraphQL APIs with an emphasis on pluggability and type safety. And it has an awesome Prisma integration! (I am genuinely excited about this one, it makes my life so much easier.)
  • Pothos – Convert TypeScript to GraphQL Schema
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 27 Sep 2022
  • How to Build a Type-safe GraphQL API using Pothos and Kysely
    5 projects | dev.to | 29 Aug 2022
    In today's article we are going to create a GraphQL api using the Koa framework together with the GraphQL Yoga library and Pothos. In addition, we will use Kysely, which is a query builder entirely written in TypeScript.
  • Extreme Explorations of TypeScript's Type System
    15 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 27 Jun 2022
    If you're a GraphQL developer, Pothos is the best example - all your user-defined types just fits in it like a glove 99% of the time. It definitely makes the most use of TS generics.

    https://pothos-graphql.dev/

    (I'm a bit sleepy, so this is the main one I can think of at the moment that I really enjoy using.)

Prisma

Posts with mentions or reviews of Prisma. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-04-29.
  • A Software Engineer's Tips and Tricks #1: Drizzle
    3 projects | dev.to | 29 Apr 2024
    In the world of software development, there are two kinds of developers: those who have never had to complain about ORMs and those who have actually used them. Whether it’s Django ORM for Python, Active Record for Ruby, GORM for Golang, Doctrine for PHP, or Prisma for TypeScript, a common issue persists: writing simple queries is straightforward, but constructing complex or optimized queries can take hours, if not days.
  • Stories Behind ZenStack V2!
    3 projects | dev.to | 29 Apr 2024
    Support for a Union type #2505
  • Deploy Full-Stack Next.js T3App with Cognito and Prisma using AWS Lambda
    4 projects | dev.to | 15 Apr 2024
    generator client { provider = "prisma-client-js" binaryTargets = ["native", "rhel-openssl-1.0.x"] } datasource db { provider = "postgresql" // NOTE: When using mysql or sqlserver, uncomment the @db.Text annotations in model Account below // Further reading: // https://next-auth.js.org/adapters/prisma#create-the-prisma-schema // https://www.prisma.io/docs/reference/api-reference/prisma-schema-reference#string url = env("DATABASE_URL") } model Post { id Int @id @default(autoincrement()) name String createdAt DateTime @default(now()) updatedAt DateTime @updatedAt createdBy User @relation(fields: [createdById], references: [id]) createdById String @@index([name]) } // ... rest of the schema
  • End-To-End Polymorphism: From Database to UI, Achieving SOLID Design
    2 projects | dev.to | 28 Mar 2024
    Unfortunately Prisma hasn’t supported polymorphism yet. As such, you can't use inheritance to model the entity in the same way as in your programming language, as depicted in the above class diagram. The good news is that we could intimate it using table inheritance to imitate it.
  • Next.js App Router Course
    1 project | dev.to | 28 Mar 2024
    In this project I am manually declaring the data types. For better type-safety, use Prisma, which automatically generates types based on your database schema.
  • Next.js 14: Fetching Data
    1 project | dev.to | 22 Mar 2024
    When you're creating a full-stack application, you'll also need to write logic to interact with your database. For relational databases like Postgres, you can do this with SQL, or an ORM like Prisma.
  • Utilizando Testcontainers para Testes de Integração com NestJS e Prisma ORM
    4 projects | dev.to | 16 Mar 2024
  • Building an Admin Console With Minimum Code Using React-Admin, Prisma, and Zenstack
    5 projects | dev.to | 11 Mar 2024
    Prisma is a modern TypeScript-first ORM that allows you to manage database schemas easily, make queries and mutations with great flexibility, and ensure excellent type safety.
  • How to add Passkey Login to Next.js using NextAuth and Hanko
    5 projects | dev.to | 4 Mar 2024
    Prisma
  • Taming cross-service database transactions in NestJS with AsyncLocalStorage
    2 projects | dev.to | 21 Feb 2024
    There have been multiple feature requests to add native support for AsyncLocalStorage to Prisma, but they haven't been met with much enthusiasm from the maintainers. Some people solved it by extending and overriding the client (which is arguably prone to breaking with updates).

What are some alternatives?

When comparing pothos and Prisma you can also consider the following projects:

nexus - Code-First, Type-Safe, GraphQL Schema Construction

Knex - A query builder for PostgreSQL, MySQL, CockroachDB, SQL Server, SQLite3 and Oracle, designed to be flexible, portable, and fun to use.

graphql-upload - Middleware and an Upload scalar to add support for GraphQL multipart requests (file uploads via queries and mutations) to various Node.js GraphQL servers.

Sequelize - Feature-rich ORM for modern Node.js and TypeScript, it supports PostgreSQL (with JSON and JSONB support), MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite, MS SQL Server, Snowflake, Oracle DB (v6), DB2 and DB2 for IBM i.

TypeGraphQL - Create GraphQL schema and resolvers with TypeScript, using classes and decorators!

TypeORM - ORM for TypeScript and JavaScript. Supports MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, SQLite, MS SQL Server, Oracle, SAP Hana, WebSQL databases. Works in NodeJS, Browser, Ionic, Cordova and Electron platforms.

graphql-ws - Coherent, zero-dependency, lazy, simple, GraphQL over WebSocket Protocol compliant server and client.

Mongoose - MongoDB object modeling designed to work in an asynchronous environment.

graphql-helix - A highly evolved GraphQL HTTP Server 🧬

MikroORM - TypeScript ORM for Node.js based on Data Mapper, Unit of Work and Identity Map patterns. Supports MongoDB, MySQL, MariaDB, MS SQL Server, PostgreSQL and SQLite/libSQL databases.

gqtx - Code-first Typescript GraphQL Server without codegen or metaprogramming

lucid - AdonisJS SQL ORM. Supports PostgreSQL, MySQL, MSSQL, Redshift, SQLite and many more