MIN and MAX functions in MySQL

Introduction

MIN and MAX help find the smallest or largest value in a list of data. They make it easy to spot extremes.

Finding the lowest price of products in a store.

Getting the highest score in a game leaderboard.

Checking the earliest or latest date in a list of events.

Finding the minimum or maximum temperature recorded in a month.

Syntax

MySQL

SELECT MIN(column_name) FROM table_name;
SELECT MAX(column_name) FROM table_name;

Use MIN to get the smallest value in a column.

Use MAX to get the largest value in a column.

Examples

This finds the lowest price in the products table.

MySQL

SELECT MIN(price) FROM products;

This finds the highest score in the game_scores table.

MySQL

SELECT MAX(score) FROM game_scores;

This finds the earliest birthdate in the users table.

MySQL

SELECT MIN(birthdate) FROM users;

This finds the highest salary in the employees table.

MySQL

SELECT MAX(salary) FROM employees;

Sample Program

This example creates a sales table, adds some sales amounts, then finds the smallest and largest sale.

MySQL

CREATE TABLE sales (
  id INT,
  amount DECIMAL(10,2)
);

INSERT INTO sales VALUES (1, 100.50), (2, 250.00), (3, 75.25), (4, 300.00);

SELECT MIN(amount) AS LowestSale, MAX(amount) AS HighestSale FROM sales;

Important Notes

MIN and MAX ignore NULL values automatically.

You can use these functions with numbers, dates, and even text (alphabetically).

Summary

MIN finds the smallest value in a column.

MAX finds the largest value in a column.

They help quickly find extremes in your data.