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FLAVIO COPES
flaviocopes.com
2026

Fix 'Already 10 Prisma Clients are actively running'

By Flavio Copes

Fix the Next.js Already 10 Prisma Clients are actively running error by exporting one shared PrismaClient instance from lib/prisma.js and reusing it.

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I was using Prisma in my Next.js app and I was doing it wrong.

I was initializing a new PrismaClient object in every page:

import { PrismaClient } from '@prisma/client'
const prisma = new PrismaClient()

After some point, during app usage, I received the error Already 10 Prisma Clients are actively running and also a Address already in use.

To fix this, I exported this Prisma initialization to a separate file, lib/prisma.js:

import { PrismaClient } from '@prisma/client'

let prisma

if (process.env.NODE_ENV === 'production') {
  prisma = new PrismaClient()
} else {
  if (!global.prisma) {
    global.prisma = new PrismaClient()
  }
  prisma = global.prisma
}

export default prisma

The production check is done because in development, npm run dev clears the Node.js cache at runtime, and this causes a new PrismaClient initialization each time due to hot reloading, so we’d not solve the problem.

I took this code from https://www.prisma.io/docs/support/help-articles/nextjs-prisma-client-dev-practices

Finally I imported the exported prisma object in my pages:

import prisma from 'lib/prisma'
~~~

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