Question

How to time SQL queries using psql?

Posted on April 18, 2022
DigitalOcean Managed PostgreSQL Database Databases SQL PostgreSQL
Asked 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

Site Moderator

• 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