Missing DATABASE_URL environment variable for Prisma in Turborepo when deploying

Question

I am trying to deploy a Next.js frontend from my Turborepo monorepo to Vercel. The deployment fails during the build step when it tries to run prisma generate.

The error log clearly shows that the DATABASE_URL environment variable is missing, even though I have it defined in my local .env files and have also added the variable to my Vercel project settings.

The Error Log from Vercel

@repo/db:build:
@repo/db:build: > @repo/db@ build /vercel/path0/packages/db
@repo/db:build: > prisma generate && tsc
@repo/db:build:
@repo/db:db:generate: [[email protected]] injecting env (0) from .env.example -- tip: ⚙️  override existing env vars with { override: true }
@repo/db:db:generate: Failed to load config file "/vercel/path0/packages/db" as a TypeScript/JavaScript module. Error: PrismaConfigEnvError: Missing required environment variable: DATABASE_URL
@repo/db:db:generate:  ELIFECYCLE  Command failed with exit code 1.
@repo/db:db:generate: ERROR: command finished with error: command (/vercel/path0/packages/db) /pnpm10/node_modules/.bin/pnpm run db:generate exited (1)
@repo/db:build: [[email protected]] injecting env (0) from .env.example -- tip: 🛠️  run anywhere with `dotenvx run -- yourcommand`
@repo/db:build: Loaded Prisma config from prisma.config.ts.
@repo/db:build:
@repo/db:build:  ELIFECYCLE  Command failed with exit code 130.
@repo/db#db:generate: command (/vercel/path0/packages/db) /pnpm10/node_modules/.bin/pnpm run db:generate exited (1)

packages/db/prisma.config.ts:

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

if (fs.existsSync(".env")) {
  dotenv.config({ path: ".env" });
} else {
  dotenv.config({ path: ".env.example" });
}

export default defineConfig({
  schema: "prisma/schema.prisma",
  migrations: {
    path: "prisma/migrations",
  },
  engine: "classic",
  datasource: {
    url: env("DATABASE_URL"),
  },
});

And here is my root turbo.json. I've tried adding the environment variable here as well.

turbo.json

{
  "$schema": "https://turborepo.com/schema.json",
  "ui": "tui",
  "tasks": {
    "build": {
      "dependsOn": ["^build", "^db:generate"],
      "inputs": ["$TURBO_DEFAULT$", ".env*"],
      "outputs": ["dist/**", ".next/**", "!.next/cache/**"],
      "env": ["DATABASE_URL", "FETCH_BASE_URL", "JWT_SECRET"]
    },
    "lint": {
      "dependsOn": ["^lint"]
    },
    "check-types": {
      "dependsOn": ["^check-types"]
    },
    "dev": {
      "dependsOn": ["^db:generate"],
      "cache": false,
      "persistent": true
    },
    "db:generate": {
      "cache": false
    },
    "db:migrate": {
      "cache": false,
      "persistent": true
    },
    "db:deploy": {
      "cache": false
    }
  }
}

Anthony Shew · Accepted Answer · 2025-11-17 17:24:53Z

0

Turborepo team member here.

It looks like the db:generate doesn't have an env key with DATABASE_URL in it. Because of this, Turborepo's Strict Mode doesn't know to allow that environment variable into that tasks' environment. It looks like this is done correctly for the build task, so you could follow that same pattern.

answered Nov 17 at 17:24

Anthony Shew

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