How to Fix Exception: Cannot Load Driver Class: com.mysql.jdbc.driver in Spring Boot

Last updated: April 30, 2025

Written by: Sudarshan Hiray

Reviewed by: Michal Aibin

MySQL

Azure Container Apps is a fully managed serverless container service that enables you to build and deploy modern, cloud-native Java applications and microservices at scale. It offers a simplified developer experience while providing the flexibility and portability of containers.

Of course, Azure Container Apps has really solid support for our ecosystem, from a number of build options, managed Java components, native metrics, dynamic logger, and quite a bit more.

To learn more about Java features on Azure Container Apps, visit the documentation page.

You can also ask questions and leave feedback on the Azure Container Apps GitHub page.

Of course, Azure Container Apps has really solid support for our ecosystem, from a number of build options, managed Java components, native metrics, dynamic logger, and quite a bit more.

To learn more about Java features on Azure Container Apps, you can get started over on the documentation page.

And, you can also ask questions and leave feedback on the Azure Container Apps GitHub page.

Modern software architecture is often broken. Slow delivery leads to missed opportunities, innovation is stalled due to architectural complexities, and engineering resources are exceedingly expensive.

Orkes is the leading workflow orchestration platform built to enable teams to transform the way they develop, connect, and deploy applications, microservices, AI agents, and more.

With Orkes Conductor managed through Orkes Cloud, developers can focus on building mission critical applications without worrying about infrastructure maintenance to meet goals and, simply put, taking new products live faster and reducing total cost of ownership.

Try a 14-Day Free Trial of Orkes Conductor today.

Orkes is the leading workflow orchestration platform built to enable teams to transform the way they develop, connect, and deploy applications, microservices, AI agents, and more.

Try a 14-Day Free Trial of Orkes Conductor today.

End-to-end testing is a very useful method to make sure that your application works as intended. This highlights issues in the overall functionality of the software, that the unit and integration test stages may miss.

Playwright is an easy-to-use, but powerful tool that automates end-to-end testing, and supports all modern browsers and platforms.

When coupled with LambdaTest (an AI-powered cloud-based test execution platform) it can be further scaled to run the Playwright scripts in parallel across 3000+ browser and device combinations:

>> Automated End-to-End Testing With Playwright

1. Introduction

When integrating MySQL with Spring Boot, we often rely on Spring Boot’s auto-configuration and JDBC support to connect to the database. However, it’s not uncommon to encounter configuration issues, especially when using outdated references. One such exception is:

Cannot load driver class: com.mysql.jdbc.Driver

In this short tutorial, we’ll understand why this error occurs, how to fix it, and test our setup to ensure the database connectivity works correctly.

2. Understanding the Cause

The root of this issue lies in using an outdated MySQL driver class. In earlier versions of the MySQL JDBC driver (Connector/J), the following driver class was commonly used:

spring.datasource.driver-class-name=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver

However, starting with MySQL Connector/J 8.0, this class has been deprecated and removed. The updated driver class is:

com.mysql.cj.jdbc.Driver

If we continue to use the old class name with a newer version of the MySQL driver, the application will fail to start with a ClassNotFoundException.

3. Fixing the Issue

To fix this problem, we need to update both our Spring Boot configuration and the dependencies being used in our project.

3.1. Using the Correct Driver Class

The first step is to replace the old driver class with the new one in the application.properties or application.yml file.

We can do it using the application.properties file:

spring.datasource.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/mydb
spring.datasource.username=root
spring.datasource.password=secret
spring.datasource.driver-class-name=com.mysql.cj.jdbc.Driver

Or we can do it using the application.yml file:

spring:
  datasource:
    url: jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/mydb
    username: root
    password: secret
    driver-class-name: com.mysql.cj.jdbc.Driver

Alternatively, Spring Boot is capable of auto-detecting the driver class from the classpath. If the correct version of the MySQL driver is present, we can safely omit the driver-class-name property altogether.

3.2. Updating Dependencies

Next, let’s ensure that the project uses the latest stable version of the MySQL JDBC driver.

For Maven:

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.mysql</groupId>
    <artifactId>mysql-connector-j</artifactId>
    <version>9.2.0</version>
</dependency>

For Gradle:

implementation("com.mysql:mysql-connector-j:9.2.0")

Using an outdated driver version may cause incompatibilities, especially if we’re using recent versions of Spring Boot or Java.

4. Testing

After updating the configuration and dependencies, we should test the fix by verifying that the application can connect to the database.

We can write a simple integration test to ensure the DataSource is working as expected:

@SpringBootTest
class LoadDriverLiveTest {
    @Autowired
    private DataSource dataSource;

    @Test
    void whenConnectingToDatabase_thenConnectionShouldBeValid() throws Exception {
        try (Connection connection = dataSource.getConnection()) {
            assertNotNull(connection);
        }
    }
}

If the test passes, it confirms that Spring Boot has successfully loaded the driver class and established a connection to the MySQL database.

5. Conclusion

In this article, we examined the cause of the Cannot load driver class: com.mysql.jdbc.Driver exception in Spring Boot and demonstrated how to fix it by updating the driver class name and project dependencies. We also wrote a simple test to confirm that the fix works as intended.

Ensuring compatibility between your dependencies and configuration is key when working with JDBC in Spring Boot. To understand the details on this topic, we can always refer to the official Spring Boot documentation and MySQL Connector/J release notes.

As always, the implementation’s source code is available over on GitHub.

Of course, Azure Container Apps has really solid support for our ecosystem, from a number of build options, managed Java components, native metrics, dynamic logger, and quite a bit more.

To learn more about Java features on Azure Container Apps, visit the documentation page.

You can also ask questions and leave feedback on the Azure Container Apps GitHub page.

Orkes is the leading workflow orchestration platform built to enable teams to transform the way they develop, connect, and deploy applications, microservices, AI agents, and more.

Try a 14-Day Free Trial of Orkes Conductor today.

Orkes is the leading workflow orchestration platform built to enable teams to transform the way they develop, connect, and deploy applications, microservices, AI agents, and more.

Try a 14-Day Free Trial of Orkes Conductor today.

Of course, Azure Container Apps has really solid support for our ecosystem, from a number of build options, managed Java components, native metrics, dynamic logger, and quite a bit more.

To learn more about Java features on Azure Container Apps, visit the documentation page.

You can also ask questions and leave feedback on the Azure Container Apps GitHub page.