---
title: Top N
description: ParadeDB is optimized for quickly finding the "Top N" results in a table
canonical: https://docs.paradedb.com/documentation/sorting/topn
---

ParadeDB is highly optimized for quickly returning the Top N results out of the index. In SQL, this means queries that contain an `ORDER BY...LIMIT`:

```sql
SELECT description, rating, category
FROM mock_items
WHERE description ||| 'running shoes'
ORDER BY rating
LIMIT 5;
```

In order for a Top N query to be executed by ParadeDB vs. vanilla Postgres, all of the following conditions must be met:

1. All `ORDER BY` fields must be indexed. If they are text fields, they [must use the literal tokenizer](#sorting-by-text).
2. At least one ParadeDB text search operator must be present at the same level as the `ORDER BY...LIMIT`.
3. The query must have a `LIMIT`.
4. With the exception of `lower`, ordering by expressions is not supported -- only the raw fields themselves.

To verify that ParadeDB is executing the Top N, look for a `Custom Scan` with a `TopNScanExecState` in the `EXPLAIN` output:

```sql
EXPLAIN SELECT description, rating, category
FROM mock_items
WHERE description ||| 'running shoes'
ORDER BY rating
LIMIT 5;
```

<Accordion title = "Expected Response">
```csv
                                                                                                   QUERY PLAN
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Limit  (cost=10.00..10.02 rows=3 width=552)
   ->  Custom Scan (ParadeDB Scan) on mock_items  (cost=10.00..10.02 rows=3 width=552)
         Table: mock_items
         Index: search_idx
         Segment Count: 1
         Exec Method: TopNScanExecState
         Scores: false
            TopN Order By: rating asc
            TopN Limit: 5
         Tantivy Query: {"with_index":{"query":{"match":{"field":"description","value":"running shoes","tokenizer":null,"distance":null,"transposition_cost_one":null,"prefix":null,"conjunction_mode":false}}}}
(10 rows)
```
</Accordion>

If any of the above conditions are not met, the query cannot be fully optimized and you will not see a `TopNScanExecState` in the `EXPLAIN` output.

## Tiebreaker Sorting

To guarantee stable sorting in the event of a tie, additional columns can be provided to `ORDER BY`:

```sql
SELECT description, rating, category
FROM mock_items
WHERE description ||| 'running shoes'
ORDER BY rating, id
LIMIT 5;
```

<Note>
  ParadeDB is currently able to handle 3 `ORDER BY` columns. If there are more
  than 3 columns, the `ORDER BY` will not be efficiently executed by ParadeDB.
</Note>

## Sorting by Text

If a text field is present in the `ORDER BY` clause, it must be indexed with the [literal](/documentation/tokenizers/available-tokenizers/literal) tokenizer.
The reason is that the literal tokenizer preserves the original text, which is necessary for accurate sorting.

Sorting by lowercase text using `lower(<text_field>)` is also supported. To enable this, first ensure that `lower(<text_field>)` is indexed with the literal tokenizer.
See [indexing expressions](/documentation/indexing/indexing-expressions) for more information.

```sql
CREATE INDEX search_idx ON mock_items
USING bm25 (id, (lower(description)::pdb.literal))
WITH (key_field='id');
```

This allows sorting by lowercase to be optimized.

```sql
SELECT description, rating, category
FROM mock_items
WHERE description ||| 'sleek running shoes'
ORDER BY lower(description)
LIMIT 5;
```
