(I work at Prisma)

It is very important to understand that Prisma is NOT a GraphQL-as-a-Service like Hasura or Postgraphile. It's really a suite of database tools that you can use for any use case (building GraphQL, REST or gRPC APIs, or use it in any other app where you need a database). We recently wrote a blog post about this topic: https://www.prisma.io/blog/prisma-and-graphql-mfl5y2r7t49c/

Also, the Prisma server (that proxies the database) is indeed currently a mandatory component in the Prisma architecture. However, this requirement will be lifted very soon (as we're currently rewriting the Prisma core in Rust) and it will be possible to run Prisma as a library, just like any other ORM.