EXISTS - ClickHouse Documentation

The EXISTS operator checks how many records are in the result of a subquery. If it is empty, then the operator returns 0. Otherwise, it returns 1. EXISTS can also be used in a WHERE clause.

References to main query tables and columns are not supported in a subquery.

Syntax

EXISTS(subquery)

Example Query checking existence of values in a subquery:

Query

SELECT EXISTS(SELECT * FROM numbers(10) WHERE number > 8), EXISTS(SELECT * FROM numbers(10) WHERE number > 11)

Response

┌─in(1, _subquery1)─┬─in(1, _subquery2)─┐
│                 1 │                 0 │
└───────────────────┴───────────────────┘

Query with a subquery returning several rows:

Query

SELECT count() FROM numbers(10) WHERE EXISTS(SELECT number FROM numbers(10) WHERE number > 8);

Response

┌─count()─┐
│      10 │
└─────────┘

Query with a subquery that returns an empty result:

Query

SELECT count() FROM numbers(10) WHERE EXISTS(SELECT number FROM numbers(10) WHERE number > 11);

Response

┌─count()─┐
│       0 │
└─────────┘

Last modified on July 2, 2026

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