MAX / MIN

Returns the maximum value in a column.

SELECT MAX(column_name) FROM table_name;

Returns the minimum value in a column.

SELECT MIN(column_name) FROM table_name;

Returns the maximum and minimum values per group.

SELECT group_column, MAX(column_name), MIN(column_name) FROM table_name GROUP BY group_column;

Syntax	Description
MAX(column_name)	Returns the maximum value in the specified column. Works with numbers, strings, and dates. NULL values are ignored.
MIN(column_name)	Returns the minimum value in the specified column. Works with numbers, strings, and dates. NULL values are ignored.

The following examples use the employees table.

Returns the highest and lowest salaries.

sample_max_min.sql

SELECT MAX(salary) AS highest_salary, MIN(salary) AS lowest_salary FROM employees;

+----------------+---------------+
| highest_salary | lowest_salary |
+----------------+---------------+
|         380000 |        250000 |
+----------------+---------------+
1 row in set

Returns the highest and lowest salary per department.

sample_max_min.sql

SELECT department, MAX(salary) AS highest_salary, MIN(salary) AS lowest_salary
FROM employees
GROUP BY department;

+--------------+----------------+---------------+
| department   | highest_salary | lowest_salary |
+--------------+----------------+---------------+
| Jujutsu High |         380000 |        250000 |
+--------------+----------------+---------------+
1 row in set

Returns the overall average salary.

sample_max_min.sql

SELECT AVG(salary) AS average_salary FROM employees;

+----------------+
| average_salary |
+----------------+
|     307500.000 |
+----------------+
1 row in set

Returns the difference between the highest and lowest salary.

sample_max_min.sql

SELECT MAX(salary) - MIN(salary) AS salary_range FROM employees;

+--------------+
| salary_range |
+--------------+
|       130000 |
+--------------+
1 row in set

Returns the alphabetically last name (string maximum).

sample_max_min.sql

SELECT MAX(name) AS max_name FROM employees;

+-----------------+
| max_name        |
+-----------------+
| Kugisaki Nobara |
+-----------------+
1 row in set

Returns the name of the employee with the highest salary (using a subquery).

sample_max_min.sql

SELECT name, salary FROM employees WHERE salary = (SELECT MAX(salary) FROM employees);

+-------------+--------+
| name        | salary |
+-------------+--------+
| Gojo Satoru | 380000 |
+-------------+--------+
1 row in set

This syntax works the same across all major databases.

SELECT department, MAX(salary) AS highest_salary, MIN(salary) AS lowest_salary
FROM employees
GROUP BY department;

How you retrieve other columns from the row that holds the maximum or minimum value differs by database. MySQL and SQLite require a subquery, while PostgreSQL supports window functions as well.

-- Works in all databases (subquery)
SELECT name, salary FROM employees
WHERE salary = (SELECT MAX(salary) FROM employees);

-- PostgreSQL (window function, also handles ties)
SELECT name, salary FROM (
    SELECT name, salary, RANK() OVER (ORDER BY salary DESC) AS rnk
    FROM employees
) ranked WHERE rnk = 1;

MAX and MIN work on strings (lexicographic order) and dates (chronological order), not just numbers. For strings, the result is determined by character code order (which closely follows alphabetical order for UTF-8 encoded text).

MAX and MIN ignore NULL values. If all values in the column are NULL, the result is also NULL.

To retrieve other columns from the row that holds the maximum or minimum value, the common approach is to find the max or min with a subquery and then filter with WHERE. If multiple rows share the same value, all of them are returned. For totals and averages, see SUM / AVG.