Deploying Express + TypeScript + Prisma to Render: What Went Wrong (and How I Fixed It)

Originally published on Medium.

When I deployed my Express + TypeScript + Prisma backend to Render, I didn’t expect to spend an entire afternoon chasing down one error after another — but that’s exactly what happened. This post is a personal log of all the unexpected problems I hit, what they actually meant, and what I did to get things working again.

I’m writing this down in case someone else (or future me) runs into the same stack of issues and needs a sanity check.

🔴 Error 1: process and console not found in TypeScript

💥 What was the error?

During the build, I saw this in the logs:

Cannot find name ‘process’.
Cannot find name ‘console’.

TypeScript didn’t seem to recognize basic Node.js globals. I thought this was weird — these should be available by default, right?

🧪 What I tried

I added the following to my tsconfig.json:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "types": ["node"]
  }
}

…only to be greeted with:

Cannot find type definition file for 'node'

I had @types/node installed — but it was under devDependencies.

✅ What actually fixed it

Turns out Render doesn’t install devDependencies during production builds by default. Once I moved @types/node to dependencies, the build succeeded.

npm install @types/node --save

✔️ Lesson learned: If your app builds before running (like most TypeScript setups), your build-time tools and types must be in dependencies, not devDependencies.

🔴 Error 2: Cannot find index.js on Render

💥 What was the error?

Another build, another facepalm:

Error: Cannot find module '/opt/render/project/src/index.js'

Render was trying to start my app using node index.js, but my compiled code lived in dist/index.js.

🧪 What I tried

I updated package.json:

{
  "main": "dist/index.js",
  "scripts": {
    "build": "tsc",
    "start": "node dist/index.js"
  }
}

Still didn’t work.

✅ What actually fixed it

Render’s Start Command was still set to node index.js in the Dashboard.

Once I changed it to:

npm start

…everything clicked into place.

✔️ Lesson learned: Your local scripts don’t override what Render runs. Double-check the Start Command and Build Command fields in the Render Dashboard.

🔴 Error 3: @prisma/client did not initialize

💥 What was the error?

@prisma/client did not initialize yet. Please run "prisma generate" and try to import it again.

At this point, I wasn’t even surprised anymore.

🧪 What I tried

I checked my build script. It was just:

"build": "tsc"

…but Prisma Client needs to be generated before TypeScript compiles the code that imports it. Oops.

Also, I noticed my schema.prisma had a custom output path like this:

generator client {
  provider = "prisma-client-js"
  output   = "../src/generated/prisma"
}

✅ What actually fixed it

I updated the Prisma generator config to use the default output path (which lives inside node_modules/.prisma/client):

generator client {
  provider = "prisma-client-js"
  output   = "../node_modules/.prisma/client"
}

I updated the build script to ensure Prisma Client gets generated before compilation:

"build": "prisma generate --no-engine && tsc"

I also updated the import to:

import { PrismaClient } from '@prisma/client';

✔️ Lesson learned: Prisma Client must be generated before compilation. Also, using the default output path avoids a lot of edge cases — especially when deploying.

✅ Final Checklist (So I Don’t Forget Again)

Here’s a checklist of everything I ended up fixing:

• Move @types/node from devDependencies → dependencies
• Use start: node dist/index.js in scripts
• Set Build Command to npm run build on Render
• Set Start Command to npm start on Render
• Use prisma generate before tsc in your build step
• Avoid customizing Prisma output unless you have to — use the default node_modules/.prisma/client
• Use --no-engine with prisma generate if you’re deploying or using Prisma Accelerate

One last thing

If you’re here because your Render build failed with some weird Prisma or TypeScript error — you’re not alone. It’s usually something small, just hiding in plain sight.

Hope this helps someone else. If you’ve run into other gotchas with this stack, feel free to share — I’d be happy to learn from your debugging too.

⸻

🛠 Tech Stack / Environment

• Node.js: 18.20.5
• Express: 5.1.0
• TypeScript: 5.8.3
• Prisma: 6.6.0
• @prisma/client: 6.6.0
• ts-node: 10.9.2
• Render deployment: May 2025