Getting started

To get started with Accelerate, you will need the following:

• A Prisma Data Platform account
• A project that uses Prisma Client 4.16.1 or higher. If your project is using interactive transactions, you need to use 5.1.1 or higher. (We always recommend using the latest version of Prisma.)
• A hosted PostgreSQL, MySQL/MariaDB, PlanetScale, CockroachDB, or MongoDB database

Navigate to your Prisma Data Platform project, choose an environment, and enable Accelerate by providing your database connection string and selecting the region nearest your database.

Once enabled, you'll be prompted to generate a connection string that you'll use to authenticate requests.

Replace your direct database URL with your new Accelerate connection string.

# New Accelerate connection string with generated API_KEY

DATABASE_URL="prisma://accelerate.prisma-data.net/?api_key=__API_KEY__"

# Previous (direct) database connection string

# DATABASE_URL="postgresql://user:password@host:port/db_name?schema=public"

Prisma Client reads the prisma:// URL from DATABASE_URL at runtime, while Prisma CLI commands use the connection string defined in prisma.config.ts.

Prisma Migrate and Introspection do not work with a prisma:// connection string. In order to continue using these features add a new variable to the .env file named DIRECT_DATABASE_URL whose value is the direct database connection string:

DATABASE_URL="prisma://accelerate.prisma-data.net/?api_key=__API_KEY__"

DIRECT_DATABASE_URL="postgresql://user:password@host:port/db_name?schema=public"

Then point prisma.config.ts to the direct connection string:

import "dotenv/config";

import { defineConfig, env } from "prisma/config";

export default defineConfig({

  schema: "prisma/schema.prisma",

  datasource: {

    url: env("DIRECT_DATABASE_URL"),

  },

});

Migrations and introspections will use the directUrl connection string rather than the one defined in url when this configuration is provided.

directUrl is useful for you to carry out migrations and introspections. However, you don't need directUrl to use Accelerate in your application.

Install the latest version of Prisma Client and Accelerate Prisma Client extension

bun add @prisma/client@latest @prisma/extension-accelerate

pnpm add @prisma/client@latest @prisma/extension-accelerate

yarn add @prisma/client@latest @prisma/extension-accelerate

npm install @prisma/client@latest @prisma/extension-accelerate

If you're using Prisma version 5.2.0 or greater, Prisma Client will automatically determine how it should connect to the database depending on the protocol in the database connection string. If the connection string in the DATABASE_URL starts with prisma://, Prisma Client will try to connect to your database using Prisma Accelerate.

When using Prisma Accelerate in long-running application servers, such as a server deployed on AWS EC2, you can generate the Prisma Client by executing the following command:

bunx prisma generate

pnpm prisma generate

yarn prisma generate

npx prisma generate

When using Prisma Accelerate in a Serverless or an Edge application, we recommend you to run the following command to generate Prisma Client:

bunx prisma generate --no-engine

pnpm prisma generate --no-engine

yarn prisma generate --no-engine

npx prisma generate --no-engine

The --no-engine flag prevents a Query Engine file from being included in the generated Prisma Client, this ensures the bundle size of your application remains small.

Add the following to extend your existing Prisma Client instance with the Accelerate extension:

import { PrismaClient } from "@prisma/client";

import { withAccelerate } from "@prisma/extension-accelerate";

const prisma = new PrismaClient({

  accelerateUrl: process.env.DATABASE_URL,

}).$extends(withAccelerate());

If you are going to deploy to an edge runtime (like Cloudflare Workers, Vercel Edge Functions, Deno Deploy, or Supabase Edge Functions), use our edge client instead:

import { PrismaClient } from "@prisma/client/edge";

import { withAccelerate } from "@prisma/extension-accelerate";

const prisma = new PrismaClient({

  accelerateUrl: process.env.DATABASE_URL,

}).$extends(withAccelerate());

If VS Code does not recognize the $extends method, refer to this section on how to resolve the issue.

Since extensions are applied one after another, make sure you apply them in the correct order. Extensions cannot share behavior and the last extension applied takes precedence.

If you are using Query Insights in your application, make sure you apply it before the Accelerate extension. For example:

const prisma = new PrismaClient({

  accelerateUrl: process.env.DATABASE_URL,

})

  .$extends(withOptimize())

  .$extends(withAccelerate());

The withAccelerate extension primarily does two things:

• Gives you access to the cacheStrategy field within each applicable model method that allows you to define a cache strategy per-query.
• Routes all of your queries through a connection pooler.

To use Accelerate's connection pooling without applying a cache strategy, run your query the same way you would without Accelerate.

By enabling Accelerate and supplying the Accelerate connection string, your queries now use the connection pooler by default.

If your application requires real-time or near-real-time data, cache invalidation ensures that users see the most current data, even when using a large ttl (Time-To-Live) or swr (Stale-While-Revalidate) cache strategy. By invalidating your cache, you can bypass extended caching periods to show live data whenever it's needed.

For example, if a dashboard displays customer information and a customer's contact details change, cache invalidation allows you to refresh only that data instantly, ensuring support staff always see the latest information without waiting for the cache to expire.

To invalidate a cached query result, you can add tags and then use the $accelerate.invalidate API.

To invalidate the query below:

await prisma.user.findMany({

  where: {

    email: {

      contains: "alice@prisma.io",

    },

  },

  cacheStrategy: {

    swr: 60,

    ttl: 60,

    tags: ["emails_with_alice"], 

  },

});

You need to provide the cache tag in the $accelerate.invalidate API:

try {

  await prisma.$accelerate.invalidate({

    tags: ["emails_with_alice"], 

  }); 

} catch (e) {

  if (e instanceof Prisma.PrismaClientKnownRequestError) {

    // The .code property can be accessed in a type-safe manner

    if (e.code === "P6003") {

      console.log("You've reached the cache invalidation rate limit. Please try again shortly.");

    }

  }

  throw e;

}