How to time SQL queries using psql?

Posted on April 18, 2022

DigitalOcean Managed PostgreSQL Database

Databases

SQL

PostgreSQL

By Bobby Iliev

Being able to tell how much time a query takes to run can be very useful when you’re trying to optimize your queries.

In this post, we’ll show you how to do this using the psql command-line tool.

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Bobby Iliev

April 18, 2022

Accepted Answer

Hello,

One of the most straightforward ways to time a query is to use the following:

First, connect to the database using psql:

psql -h localhost -p 5432 -U postgres

Note that you would need to have the psql command installed on your machine:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-postgresql-on-ubuntu-20-04-quickstart

Then you can run the following statement to enable query timing:

\timing

Once you’ve executed the above statement, you can run the query you want to time.

SELECT * FROM users;

Output:

Time: 0.120 ms

This is going to be enabled for your current session only. Once you open a new session, the query timing will be disabled, so you will have to enable it again.

Hope that this helps!

Best,

Bobby