$limit (aggregation)¶

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Definition
Example

Definition¶

$limit¶

Limits the number of documents passed to the next stage in the pipeline.

The $limit stage has the following prototype form:

{ $limit: <positive integer> }

$limit takes a positive integer that specifies the maximum number of documents to pass along.

Example¶

Consider the following example:

copy

db.article.aggregate([
   { $limit : 5 }
]);

This operation returns only the first 5 documents passed to it by the pipeline. $limit has no effect on the content of the documents it passes.

Note

When a $sort precedes a $limit and there are no intervening stages that modify the number of documents, the optimizer can coalesce the $limit into the $sort. This allows the $sort operation to only maintain the top n results as it progresses, where n is the specified limit, and ensures that MongoDB only needs to store n items in memory. This optimization still applies when allowDiskUse is true and the n items exceed the aggregation memory limit.