Setting up Drizzle ORM with Bun SQLite

I've been building a small journaling app in Bun and wanted to introduce a database. Drizzle felt like the right fit: it's type-safe, stays close to SQL and has first-class support for Bun's native SQLite driver.

Installation

Drizzle is currently in beta, so both packages need the @beta tag:

bun add drizzle-orm@beta
bun add -d drizzle-kit@beta @types/bun

drizzle-kit is the CLI tool that handles schema pushes, migrations and Drizzle Studio. It goes in devDependencies since it's only needed during development.

Scripts

The package.json scripts need a bun --bun prefix on the drizzle-kit commands:

"scripts": {
  "drizzle:push": "bun --bun drizzle-kit push",
  "drizzle:studio": "bun --bun drizzle-kit studio"
}

The --bun flag tells Bun to resolve the SQLite driver through its own runtime rather than falling back to a Node.js-compatible shim.

Config

Create drizzle.config.ts at the project root. This tells drizzle-kit where your schema lives, which dialect to use and how to connect:

import { defineConfig } from "drizzle-kit";

export default defineConfig({
  out: "./drizzle",
  schema: "./src/db/schema.ts",
  dialect: "sqlite",
  dbCredentials: {
    url: process.env.DATABASE_URL!,
  },
});

Set DATABASE_URL in your .env:

DATABASE_URL=file:./journal.db

Client

Create the database client at src/db/index.ts. The bun-sqlite import is the Bun-native driver, distinct from the generic sqlite adapter:

import { drizzle } from "drizzle-orm/bun-sqlite";
import * as schema from "./schema";

export const db = drizzle(process.env.DATABASE_URL!, { schema });

Passing schema here enables relational queries via db.query. If you're only using the query builder, it's optional.

Schema

Create src/db/schema.ts and define your tables. Here's a simple notes table:

import { int, sqliteTable, text } from "drizzle-orm/sqlite-core";

export const notesTable = sqliteTable("notes", {
  id: int().primaryKey({ autoIncrement: true }),
  content: text().notNull(),
  createdAt: int({ mode: "timestamp_ms" }).notNull(),
  updatedAt: int({ mode: "timestamp_ms" }).notNull(),
});

int({ mode: "timestamp_ms" }) is worth calling out: it stores timestamps as integers (milliseconds since epoch) in SQLite and maps them to JS Date objects in Drizzle. That means you can assign new Date() or Date.now() directly without a conversion layer.

Pushing the schema

bun drizzle:push

This applies schema changes directly to the database. For development, it's the fast path: no migration files, just push and query. For production, you'd want drizzle-kit generate to produce tracked SQL migration files, then drizzle-kit migrate to apply them.

Once the schema is pushed, Drizzle Studio gives you a local web UI to browse and edit the database contents:

bun drizzle:studio