Environment variables reference (Prisma ORM v6) (/docs/orm/v6/reference/environment-variables-reference)

For the complete Prisma documentation index, see llms.txt. A markdown version of any docs page is available by appending .md to its URL.

This page gives an overview of all environment variables available for use.

Location: ORM > v6 > Reference > Environment variables reference

This document describes different environment variables and their use cases.

DEBUG is used to enable debugging output in Prisma Client.

Example setting Prisma Client level debugging output:

# enable only `prisma:client`-level debugging output
export DEBUG="prisma:client"

See Debugging for more information.

NO_COLOR if truthy will activate the colorless setting for error formatting and strip colors from error messages.

See Formatting via environment variables for more information.

BROWSER is for Prisma Studio to force which browser it should be open in, if not set it will open in the default browser.

BROWSER=firefox prisma studio --port 5555

Alternatively you can set this when starting Studio from the CLI as well:

prisma studio --browser firefox

See Studio documentation for more information.

PRISMA_HIDE_PREVIEW_FLAG_WARNINGS hides the warning message that states that a preview feature flag can be removed. It is a truthy value.

PRISMA_HIDE_UPDATE_MESSAGE is used to hide the update notification message that is shown when a newer Prisma CLI version is available. It's a truthy value.

[!CAUTION] Prisma v7 Deprecation

This environment variable is only supported in Prisma 6.19 and earlier. It will not work in Prisma v7.

PRISMA_GENERATE_SKIP_AUTOINSTALL can be set to a truthy value to skip the auto-install of prisma CLI and @prisma/client dependencies (if they are missing), if the prisma-client-js generator is defined in the Prisma Schema, when using the prisma generate command.

[!CAUTION] Prisma v7 deprecation

This environment variable is only supported in Prisma 6.19 and earlier. It will not work in Prisma v7.

PRISMA_SKIP_POSTINSTALL_GENERATE can be set to a truthy value to skip the auto-generation of Prisma Client when its postinstall hook is triggered by a package manager. The postinstall hook of the @prisma/client package is triggered when the package is installed, or its version is updated.

Disables all CLI warnings generated by logger.warn.

[!CAUTION] Prisma v7 deprecation

This environment variable is only supported in Prisma 6.19 and earlier. It will not work in Prisma v7.

[!NOTE] This environment variable is available since version 5.2.0

PRISMA_GENERATE_NO_ENGINE can be set to a truthy value to generate a Prisma Client without an included query engine in order to reduce deployed application size when paired with Prisma Accelerate.

[!NOTE] This environment variable is available since version 5.3.0

PRISMA_SCHEMA_DISABLE_ADVISORY_LOCK can be set to a truthy value to disable the advisory locking used by Prisma Migrate. This might be needed, depending on the database configuration, for example, for a Percona-XtraDB-Cluster or MariaDB Galera Cluster.

The Prisma CLI supports custom HTTP(S) proxies to download the Prisma engines. These can be helpful to use when working behind a corporate firewall. See Using a HTTP proxy for the CLI for more information.

NO_PROXY is a comma-separated list of hostnames or IP addresses that do not require a proxy.

NO_PROXY=myhostname.com,10.11.12.0/16,172.30.0.0/16

HTTP_PROXY is set with the hostname or IP address of a proxy server.

HTTP_PROXY=http://proxy.example.com

HTTPS_PROXY is set with the hostname or IP address of a proxy server.

HTTPS_PROXY=https://proxy.example.com

[!CAUTION] Removed in Prisma v7

This environment variable is only supported in Prisma 6.19 and earlier. It will not work in Prisma v7.

PRISMA_CLI_QUERY_ENGINE_TYPE is used to define the query engine type Prisma CLI downloads and uses. Defaults to library, but can be set to binary:

PRISMA_CLI_QUERY_ENGINE_TYPE=binary

[!CAUTION] Removed in Prisma v7

This environment variable is only supported in Prisma 6.19 and earlier. It will not work in Prisma v7.

PRISMA_CLIENT_ENGINE_TYPE is used to define the query engine type Prisma Client downloads and uses. Defaults to library, but can be set to binary:

PRISMA_CLIENT_ENGINE_TYPE=binary

Note: You need to generate your Prisma Client after setting this variable for the configuration to take effect and the libraries to be downloaded. Otherwise, Prisma Client will be missing the appropriate query engine library and you will have to define their location using PRISMA_QUERY_ENGINE_LIBRARY.

It is the environment variable equivalent for the engineType property of the generator block which enables you to define the same setting in your Prisma Schema.

PRISMA_ENGINES_MIRROR can be used to specify a custom CDN (or server) endpoint to download the engines files for the CLI/Client. The default value is https://binaries.prisma.sh, where Prisma hosts the engine files.

PRISMA_ENGINES_MIRROR=https://example.org/custom-engines/

See Prisma engines for a conceptual overview of how to use this environment variable.

Note: This environment variable used to be available as PRISMA_BINARIES_MIRROR, which was deprecated in Prisma ORM 3.0.1. It is discouraged to use anymore and will be removed in the future.

[!NOTE] This environment variable is available since version 4.16.0

PRISMA_ENGINES_CHECKSUM_IGNORE_MISSING can be set to a truthy value to ignore problems around downloading & verifying the integrity (via a checksum file) of the Prisma ORM engines. This is particularly useful when deploying to an offline system environment where the checksum file cannot be downloaded.

PRISMA_ENGINES_CHECKSUM_IGNORE_MISSING=1

Note: we might change the overall download behavior in a future release in a way that this environment variable will not be needed anymore in a offline environment case.

By default, all engine files are downloaded when you install Prisma CLI, copied when generating Prisma Client, and put into known locations. There are however situations where you may want to use a custom engine file from custom locations:

[!CAUTION] Prisma v7 Deprecation

This environment variable is only supported in Prisma 6.19 and earlier. It will not work in Prisma v7.

PRISMA_QUERY_ENGINE_BINARY is used to set a custom location for your own query engine binary.

PRISMA_QUERY_ENGINE_BINARY=custom/query-engine-<target>
# Example: ./prisma/binaries/query-engine-linux-arm64-openssl-1.0.x

For Prisma CLI it allows you to define the query engine file to be used.
For Prisma Client, on build time (during prisma generate), it defines where the query engine file will be copied from into Prisma Client. At run time (when using the generated Client) it can be used to define the specific query engine file to be used instead of the included one.

Note: This can only have an effect if the engine type of CLI or Client are set to binary. If the engine type is library (the default), use PRISMA_QUERY_ENGINE_LIBRARY instead.

[!CAUTION] Prisma v7 Deprecation

This environment variable is only supported in Prisma 6.19 and earlier. It will not work in Prisma v7.

PRISMA_QUERY_ENGINE_LIBRARY is used to set a custom location for your own query engine library.

PRISMA_QUERY_ENGINE_LIBRARY=custom/libquery_engine-<target>.so.node
# Example: ./prisma/binaries/libquery_engine-linux-arm64-openssl-1.0.x.so.node

For Prisma CLI it allows you to define the query engine file to be used.
For Prisma Client, on build time (during prisma generate), it defines where the query engine file will be copied from into Prisma Client. At run time (when using the generated Client) it can be used to define the specific query engine file to be used instead of the included one.

Note: This can only have an effect if the engine type of CLI or Client are set to library (the default)

PRISMA_SCHEMA_ENGINE_BINARY is used to set a custom location for your Schema engine binary.

PRISMA_SCHEMA_ENGINE_BINARY=custom/my-schema-engine-unix

[!WARNING] Deprecated: PRISMA_MIGRATION_ENGINE_BINARY variable is deprecated in 5.0.0 because Migration engine was renamed to Schema Engine.

PRISMA_MIGRATION_ENGINE_BINARY is used to set a custom location for your own migration engine binary.

PRISMA_MIGRATION_ENGINE_BINARY=custom/my-migration-engine-unix

[!CAUTION] Removed in Prisma v7

This environment variable is only supported in Prisma 6.19 and earlier. It will not work in Prisma v7.

PRISMA_INTROSPECTION_ENGINE_BINARY is used to set a custom location for your own introspection engine binary.

PRISMA_INTROSPECTION_ENGINE_BINARY=custom/my-introspection-engine-unix

[!WARNING] The Introspection Engine is served by the Migration Engine from 4.9.0. Therefore, the PRISMA_INTROSPECTION_ENGINE environment variable will not be used.

[!CAUTION] This functionality has been removed in Prisma CLI version 4.10.0. It only works in earlier versions.

PRISMA_FMT_BINARY is used to set a custom location for your own format engine binary.

PRISMA_FMT_BINARY=custom/my-custom-format-engine-unix

[!WARNING] The PRISMA_FMT_BINARY variable is used in versions 4.2.0 or lower.

[!CAUTION] Prisma v7 Deprecation

This environment variable is only supported in Prisma 6.19 and earlier. It will not work in Prisma v7.

PRISMA_CLI_BINARY_TARGETS can be used to specify one or more binary targets that Prisma CLI will download during installation (so it must be provided during npm install of Prisma CLI and does not affect runtime of Prisma CLI or Prisma Client).

Use PRISMA_CLI_BINARY_TARGETS if you 1) deploy to a specific platform via an upload of a local project that includes dependencies, and 2) your local environment is different from the target (e.g. AWS Lambda with Node.js 20+ is rhel-openssl-3.0.x, and your local environment might be macOS arm64 darwin-arm64). Using the PRISMA_CLI_BINARY_TARGETS environment variable ensures that the target engine files are also downloaded.

PRISMA_CLI_BINARY_TARGETS=darwin-arm64,rhel-openssl-3.0.x npm install

This is the Prisma CLI equivalent for the binaryTargets property of the generator block, which enables you to define the same setting for Prisma Client.

[!NOTE] Note

For Node.js versions earlier than 20, the openssl version was 1.0.x instead of 3.0.x. This is most obvious in AWS Lambda deployments, where the binary target would be rhel-openssl-1.0.x instead of rhel-openssl-3.0.x.

• Connection URLs: Learn about the format and syntax Prisma ORM uses for defining database connection URLs for PostgreSQL, MySQL and SQLite.
• Database features matrix: Learn which database features are supported in Prisma ORM and how they map to the different Prisma ORM tools.
• Error message reference: Prisma Client, Migrate, Introspection error message reference
• Preview features: Previews are typically available behind a feature flag or require some form of opt-in.
• Prisma CLI reference: This page gives an overview of all available Prisma CLI commands, explains their options and shows numerous usage examples.