For MySQL users: Regardless of how you do it (Model::truncate(), etc.), the TRUNCATE TABLE command is effectively a DDL operation (like DROP and CREATE), not a DML one like DELETE. Internally, MySQL drops and recreates the table (or at least its data file), which is why it’s much faster than DELETE. Therefore to be able to truncate the table you will need the DROP privilege on your MySQL user which is potentially overkill.