---
layout: docu
redirect_from:
- /docs/guides/meta/explain_analyze
title: 'EXPLAIN ANALYZE: Profile Queries'
---

Prepending a query with `EXPLAIN ANALYZE` both pretty-prints the query plan,
and executes it, providing run-time performance numbers for every operator, as well as the estimated cardinality (`EC`) and the actual cardinality.

```sql
EXPLAIN ANALYZE SELECT * FROM tbl;
```

Note that the **cumulative** wall-clock time that is spent on every operator is shown. When multiple threads are processing the query in parallel, the total processing time of the query may be lower than the sum of all the times spent on the individual operators.

Below is an example of running `EXPLAIN ANALYZE` on a query:

```sql
CREATE TABLE students (name VARCHAR, sid INTEGER);
CREATE TABLE exams (eid INTEGER, subject VARCHAR, sid INTEGER);
INSERT INTO students VALUES ('Mark', 1), ('Joe', 2), ('Matthew', 3);
INSERT INTO exams VALUES (10, 'Physics', 1), (20, 'Chemistry', 2), (30, 'Literature', 3);

EXPLAIN ANALYZE
    SELECT name
    FROM students
    JOIN exams USING (sid)
    WHERE name LIKE 'Ma%';
```

```text
┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
│┌───────────────────────────────────┐│
││        Total Time: 0.0008s        ││
│└───────────────────────────────────┘│
└─────────────────────────────────────┘
┌───────────────────────────┐
│      EXPLAIN_ANALYZE      │
│   ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─   │
│             0             │
│          (0.00s)          │
└─────────────┬─────────────┘
┌─────────────┴─────────────┐
│         PROJECTION        │
│   ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─   │
│            name           │
│   ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─   │
│             2             │
│          (0.00s)          │
└─────────────┬─────────────┘
┌─────────────┴─────────────┐
│         HASH_JOIN         │
│   ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─   │
│           INNER           │
│         sid = sid         │
│   ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─   ├──────────────┐
│           EC: 1           │              │
│   ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─   │              │
│             2             │              │
│          (0.00s)          │              │
└─────────────┬─────────────┘              │
┌─────────────┴─────────────┐┌─────────────┴─────────────┐
│         SEQ_SCAN          ││           FILTER          │
│   ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─   ││   ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─   │
│           exams           ││     prefix(name, 'Ma')    │
│   ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─   ││   ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─   │
│            sid            ││           EC: 1           │
│   ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─   ││   ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─   │
│           EC: 3           ││             2             │
│   ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─   ││          (0.00s)          │
│             3             ││                           │
│          (0.00s)          ││                           │
└───────────────────────────┘└─────────────┬─────────────┘
┌─────────────┴─────────────┐
│         SEQ_SCAN          │
│   ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─   │
│          students         │
│   ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─   │
│            sid            │
│            name           │
│   ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─   │
│ Filters: name>=Ma AND name│
│  <Mb AND name IS NOT NULL │
│   ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─   │
│           EC: 1           │
│   ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─   │
│             2             │
│          (0.00s)          │
└───────────────────────────┘
```

## See Also

For more information, see the [”Profiling” page]({% link docs/stable/dev/profiling.md %}).