How to limit rows in PostgreSQL SELECT

Question

What's the equivalent to SQL Server's TOP or DB2's FETCH FIRST or mySQL's LIMIT in PostgreSQL?

How funny...I *just* wanted to know this yesterday! (of course, now I don't need to know any more, but I'll vote you up anyway since I could have used it then.) — Beska, Jul 15 '09 at 20:51

score 126 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 17 '16 at 07:36

126

You can use LIMIT just like in MySQL, for example:

SELECT * FROM users LIMIT 5;

edited Jun 17 '16 at 07:36

a_horse_with_no_name

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answered Jul 15 '09 at 20:50

Sinan Taifour

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As suggested by mongotop, to avoid unpredictable results, you need to use an ORDER BY clause. See https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/queries-limit.html – Poiana Apuana Jan 11 '17 at 10:17

score 28 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 03 '16 at 17:51

You could always add the OFFSET clause along with LIMIT clause.

You may need to pick up a set of records from a particular offset. Here is an example which picks up 3 records starting from 3rd position:

testdb=# SELECT * FROM COMPANY LIMIT 3 OFFSET 2;

This would produce the following result:

 id | name  | age | address   | salary
----+-------+-----+-----------+--------
  3 | Teddy |  23 | Norway    |  20000
  4 | Mark  |  25 | Rich-Mond |  65000
  5 | David |  27 | Texas     |  85000

Full explanation and more examples check HERE

When using LIMIT, it is important to use an ORDER BY clause that constrains the result rows into a unique order. Otherwise you will get an unpredictable subset of the query's rows (from documentation). — user935714, Aug 05 '16 at 17:23

Vlad Mihalcea · Answer 3 · 2021-01-10T10:03:34.473

On PostgreSQL, there are two ways to achieve this goal.

SQL Standard

The first option is to use the SQL:2008 standard way of limiting a result set using the FETCH FIRST N ROWS ONLY syntax:

SELECT
    title
FROM
    post
ORDER BY
    id DESC
FETCH FIRST 50 ROWS ONLY

The SQL:2008 standard syntax is supported since PostgreSQL 8.4.

PostgreSQL 8.3 or older

For PostgreSQL 8.3 or older versions, you need the LIMIT clause to restrict the result set size:

SELECT
    title
FROM
    post
ORDER BY
    id DESC
LIMIT 50

Hosam Aly · Answer 4 · 2020-02-22T20:21:51.700

7

Use the LIMIT clause or FETCH FIRST 10 ROWS

edited Feb 22 '20 at 20:21

answered Jul 15 '09 at 20:51

Hosam Aly

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score 5 · Answer 5 · answered Jun 17 '16 at 07:19

5

Apart from limit you could use Fetch First as well. Your question already had the answer

Select * from users FETCH FIRST 5 ROWS ONLY

answered Jun 17 '16 at 07:19

Sarath

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How to limit rows in PostgreSQL SELECT

5 Answers5

SQL Standard

PostgreSQL 8.3 or older

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