Use Prisma with Bun

Create a directory and initialize it with bun init.

mkdir prisma-app
cd prisma-app
bun init

Then install the Prisma CLI (prisma), Prisma Client (@prisma/client), and the LibSQL adapter as dependencies.

bun add -d prisma
bun add @prisma/client @prisma/adapter-libsql

Use the Prisma CLI with bunx to initialize the schema and migration directory. This guide uses a local SQLite database file. prisma init writes its connection string, DATABASE_URL="file:./dev.db", to .env.

bunx --bun prisma init --datasource-provider sqlite

This creates a basic schema. Open prisma/schema.prisma, update the generator block to use the Rust-free client with the bun runtime, and add a User model.

prisma/schema.prisma

  generator client {
    provider = "prisma-client"
    output = "../generated/prisma" 
    output = "./generated" 
    engineType = "client" 
    runtime = "bun" 
  }

  datasource db {
    provider = "sqlite"
  }

  model User { 
    id    Int     @id @default(autoincrement()) 
    email String  @unique 
    name  String? 
  } 

Generate and run the initial migration. The command writes a .sql migration file to prisma/migrations, creates a new SQLite database, and runs the migration against it. Bun does not load .env automatically when it runs a CLI with --bun. The prisma.config.ts generated by prisma init reads DATABASE_URL from the environment, so pass --env-file=.env explicitly.

 bun run --bun --env-file=.env prisma migrate dev --name init

Loaded Prisma config from prisma.config.ts.

Prisma schema loaded from prisma/schema.prisma.
Datasource "db": SQLite database "dev.db" at "file:./dev.db"

SQLite database dev.db created at file:./dev.db

Applying migration `20251014141233_init`

The following migration(s) have been created and applied from new schema changes:

prisma/migrations/
 └─ 20251014141233_init/
   └─ migration.sql

Your database is now in sync with your schema.

prisma migrate dev does not generate the Prisma client, so generate it with the Prisma CLI. The client provides a fully typed API for reading and writing to your database.

bun run --bun --env-file=.env prisma generate

Create a new file prisma/db.ts that initializes the PrismaClient with the LibSQL adapter.

import { PrismaClient } from "./generated/client";
import { PrismaLibSql } from "@prisma/adapter-libsql";

const adapter = new PrismaLibSql({ url: process.env.DATABASE_URL || "" });
export const prisma = new PrismaClient({ adapter });

Write a script that creates a new user, then counts the users in the database.

import { prisma } from "./prisma/db";

// create a new user
await prisma.user.create({
  data: {
    name: "John Dough",
    email: `john-${Math.random()}@example.com`,
  },
});

// count the number of users
const count = await prisma.user.count();
console.log(`There are ${count} users in the database.`);

Run the script with bun run. Each run creates a new user.

bun run index.ts

There are 1 users in the database.

bun run index.ts

There are 2 users in the database.

bun run index.ts

There are 3 users in the database.