Connection URL to your database using PgBouncer.

DATABASE_URL="postgres://root:password@127.0.0.1:54321/postgres?pgbouncer=true"

Direct connection URL to the database used for Prisma CLI commands.

DIRECT_URL="postgres://root:password@127.0.0.1:5432/postgres"

Configure `prisma.config.ts` to point to the direct connection string. Prisma CLI commands always read from this configuration.

prisma.config.ts

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

export default defineConfig({ schema: "prisma/schema.prisma", datasource: { url: env("DIRECT_URL"), }, });

At runtime, instantiate Prisma Client with a driver adapter (for example, `@prisma/adapter-pg`) that uses the pooled connection string:

src/db/client.ts

import { PrismaClient } from "../prisma/generated/client"; import { PrismaPg } from "@prisma/adapter-pg";

const adapter = new PrismaPg({ connectionString: process.env.DATABASE_URL }); export const prisma = new PrismaClient({ adapter });

### [PgBouncer](#pgbouncer)

PostgreSQL only supports a certain amount of concurrent connections, and this limit can be reached quite fast when the service usage goes up – especially in [serverless environments](#serverless-environments-faas).

[PgBouncer](https://www.pgbouncer.org/) holds a connection pool to the database and proxies incoming client connections by sitting between Prisma Client and the database. This reduces the number of processes a database has to handle at any given time. PgBouncer passes on a limited number of connections to the database and queues additional connections for delivery when connections become available. To use PgBouncer, see [Configure Prisma Client with PgBouncer](pgbouncer/index.md).

### [AWS RDS Proxy](#aws-rds-proxy)

Due to the way AWS RDS Proxy pins connections, [it does not provide any connection pooling benefits](../../deployment/caveats-when-deploying-to-aws-platforms/index.md#aws-rds-proxy) when used together with Prisma Client.