Local development (/docs/local-development)

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Run the whole Prisma stack on your machine, with your app on Bun, a local Prisma Postgres database, and local object storage.

Location: Local development

Local development with Prisma means running the stack you deploy, on your machine. You build and test against local pieces, then ship the same code to Prisma Compute and Prisma Postgres without changing application logic.

Each piece of the platform has a local counterpart:

• Your app runs with your framework's dev server or with Bun directly. Prisma Compute runs deployed apps on Bun, so there is no platform emulator to install: the runtime you develop against is the runtime you ship. See Local app.
• Your storage is S3-compatible, so the same client code works against a hosted bucket and a local stand-in. See Local storage.
• Your database runs as a local Prisma Postgres instance, started with one command and no Postgres install. See Local Postgres.

Apps deploy to Compute as Prisma Composer apps, and the pipeline a deploy runs is the same one you run locally: dev brings your app up, whether it is one service or several, against local stand-ins for Compute and Prisma Postgres, with no cloud credentials. See Local development in Composer.

• Local app: Iterate with your framework's dev loop and run the whole app with dev.

• Local storage: Use S3-compatible clients against local stand-in buckets and hosted buckets alike.

• Local Postgres: Start a local Prisma Postgres database with prisma dev and manage named instances.

The local stack is designed so that switching to the hosted platform is a configuration change, not a code change:

1. Deploy your app with deploy: the same declarations that ran against local stand-ins provision hosted services, Prisma Postgres databases, and buckets on the platform.
2. For connections you wired by hand, point DATABASE_URL at a hosted Prisma Postgres database and swap local bucket credentials for a minted access key.

• Choose a Prisma ORM setup path: Choose the fastest path to try Prisma ORM in a new or existing project.
• Console: Learn how to use the Console to manage and integrate Prisma products into your application.
• Deploy the full Prisma stack: A single tutorial from empty directory to live URL, with Prisma Composer, Prisma ORM, and Prisma Postgres.
• Introduction to Prisma ORM: Prisma ORM 8 is the current release.
• Overview: Prisma CLI reference