SQL TOP, LIMIT and FETCH FIRST — How to Limit Rows Returned

Why Limit Rows?

Limiting rows is useful for previewing data quickly, building paginated results, finding top-N values, and improving query performance on large tables.

We will use this Employees table:

+----+-----------+------------+--------+-----------+
| ID | Name      | Department | Salary | City      |
+----+-----------+------------+--------+-----------+
| 1  | Priya K.  | Sales      | 55000  | Mumbai    |
| 2  | John D.   | Marketing  | 62000  | London    |
| 3  | Arun M.   | IT         | 78000  | Delhi     |
| 4  | Emma W.   | Sales      | 51000  | Sydney    |
| 5  | Ravi S.   | IT         | 72000  | Mumbai    |
| 6  | Sara L.   | HR         | 58000  | New York  |
+----+-----------+------------+--------+-----------+

MySQL / PostgreSQL — LIMIT

The LIMIT clause restricts how many rows are returned. It goes at the very end of the query:

SELECT Name, Salary
FROM Employees
ORDER BY Salary DESC
LIMIT 3;

+-----------+--------+
| Name      | Salary |
+-----------+--------+
| Arun M.   | 78000  |
| Ravi S.   | 72000  |
| John D.   | 62000  |
+-----------+--------+

SQL Server — TOP

SQL Server uses TOP instead of LIMIT. It goes right after SELECT:

SELECT TOP 3 Name, Salary
FROM Employees
ORDER BY Salary DESC;

Oracle / Standard SQL — FETCH FIRST

Oracle and the SQL standard use FETCH FIRST:

SELECT Name, Salary
FROM Employees
ORDER BY Salary DESC
FETCH FIRST 3 ROWS ONLY;

Syntax Comparison

LIMIT with OFFSET — Pagination

OFFSET skips a specified number of rows before returning results. Combined with LIMIT, it enables pagination:

SELECT Name, Salary
FROM Employees
ORDER BY ID
LIMIT 3 OFFSET 2;

+-----------+--------+
| Name      | Salary |
+-----------+--------+
| Arun M.   | 78000  |
| Emma W.   | 51000  |
| Ravi S.   | 72000  |
+-----------+--------+

OFFSET 2 skips the first 2 rows (Priya, John). LIMIT 3 returns the next 3 rows.

LIMIT with WHERE

You can combine LIMIT with WHERE to get the top results from a filtered set. Always use ORDER BY with LIMIT for predictable results:

SELECT Name, Department, Salary
FROM Employees
WHERE Salary > 55000
ORDER BY Salary DESC
LIMIT 2;

+-----------+------------+--------+
| Name      | Department | Salary |
+-----------+------------+--------+
| Arun M.   | IT         | 78000  |
| Ravi S.   | IT         | 72000  |
+-----------+------------+--------+

For a complete reference of the LIMIT syntax, see the official MySQL SELECT documentation. In the next chapter, you will learn how to find minimum and maximum values with SQL MIN and MAX.

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SELECT Name, Salary
FROM Employees
ORDER BY Salary ASC
LIMIT 2;

+-----------+--------+
| Name      | Salary |
+-----------+--------+
| Emma W.   | 51000  |
| Priya K.  | 55000  |
+-----------+--------+

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