---
title: Cardinality
description: Compute the number of distinct values in a field
canonical: https://docs.paradedb.com/documentation/aggregates/metrics/cardinality
---

The cardinality aggregation estimates the number of distinct values in a field.

<CodeGroup>
```sql SQL
SELECT pdb.agg('{"cardinality": {"field": "rating"}}') FROM mock_items
WHERE id @@@ pdb.all();
```

```python Django
from paradedb import Agg, All, ParadeDB

MockItem.objects.filter(
    id=ParadeDB(All())
).aggregate(agg=Agg('{"cardinality": {"field": "rating"}}'))
```

```python SQLAlchemy
from sqlalchemy import select
from sqlalchemy.orm import Session
from paradedb.sqlalchemy import pdb, search

stmt = (
    select(pdb.agg({"cardinality": {"field": "rating"}}))
    .select_from(MockItem)
    .where(search.all(MockItem.id))
)

with Session(engine) as session:
    session.execute(stmt).all()
```

```ruby Rails
MockItem.search(:id)
        .match_all
        .facets_agg(agg: { cardinality: { field: "rating" } })
```

</CodeGroup>

```ini Expected Response
      agg
----------------
 {"value": 5.0}
(1 row)
```

Unlike SQL's `DISTINCT` clause, which returns an exact value but is very computationally expensive, the cardinality aggregation uses the HyperLogLog++ algorithm to
closely approximate the number of distinct values.

See the [Tantivy documentation](https://docs.rs/tantivy/latest/tantivy/aggregation/metric/struct.CardinalityAggregationReq.html) for all available options.