Prisma in Lambda

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To use Prisma in a Lambda function you need to

• Generate the Prisma Client with the right architecture
• Copy the generated client to the function
• Run the function inside a VPC

You can set the architecture using the binaryTargets option in prisma/schema.prisma.

prisma/schema.prisma

// For x86
binaryTargets = ["native", "rhel-openssl-3.0.x"]
// For ARM
// binaryTargets = ["native", "linux-arm64-openssl-3.0.x"]

You can also switch to ARM, just make sure to also change the function architecture in your sst.config.ts.

sst.config.ts

{
  // For ARM
  architecture: "arm64"
}

To generate the client, you need to run prisma generate when you make changes to the schema.

Since this needs to be done on every deploy, we add a postinstall script to the package.json.

package.json

"scripts": {
  "postinstall": "prisma generate"
}

This runs the command on npm install.

We then need to copy the generated client to the function when we deploy.

sst.config.ts

{
  copyFiles: [{ from: "node_modules/.prisma/client/" }]
}

Our function also needs to run inside a VPC, since Prisma doesn’t support the Data API.

sst.config.ts

{
  vpc
}

Prisma in serverless environments

Prisma is not great in serverless environments. For a couple of reasons:

1. It doesn’t support Data API, so you need to manage the connection pool on your own.
2. Without the Data API, your functions need to run inside a VPC.
   • You cannot use sst dev without connecting to the VPC.
3. Due to the internal architecture of their client, it’s also has slower cold starts.

Instead we recommend using Drizzle. This example is here for reference for people that are already using Prisma.

sst.config.ts

const vpc = new sst.aws.Vpc("MyVpc", { nat: "managed" });
const rds = new sst.aws.Postgres("MyPostgres", { vpc });

const api = new sst.aws.Function("MyApi", {
  vpc,
  url: true,
  link: [rds],
  // For ARM
  // architecture: "arm64",
  handler: "index.handler",
  copyFiles: [{ from: "node_modules/.prisma/client/" }],
});

index.ts

import { prisma } from "./prisma";

async function createUser(name: string, email: string) {
  return prisma.user.create({
    data: { name, email },
  });
}

export async function handler() {
  const user = await createUser("Alice", `alice-${crypto.randomUUID()}@example.com`);
  return {
    statusCode: 201,
    body: JSON.stringify({ user }),
  };
}

View the full example.