Skip to main content

Polars logo

Documentation: Python - Rust - Node.js - R | StackOverflow: Python - Rust - Node.js - R | User guide | Discord

Polars: Blazingly fast DataFrames in Rust, Python, Node.js, R, and SQL

Polars is a DataFrame interface on top of an OLAP Query Engine implemented in Rust using Apache Arrow Columnar Format as the memory model.

  • Lazy | eager execution
  • Multi-threaded
  • SIMD
  • Query optimization
  • Powerful expression API
  • Hybrid Streaming (larger-than-RAM datasets)
  • Rust | Python | NodeJS | R | ...

To learn more, read the user guide.

Python

>>> import polars as pl
>>> df = pl.DataFrame(
...     {
...         "A": [1, 2, 3, 4, 5],
...         "fruits": ["banana", "banana", "apple", "apple", "banana"],
...         "B": [5, 4, 3, 2, 1],
...         "cars": ["beetle", "audi", "beetle", "beetle", "beetle"],
...     }
... )

# embarrassingly parallel execution & very expressive query language
>>> df.sort("fruits").select(
...     "fruits",
...     "cars",
...     pl.lit("fruits").alias("literal_string_fruits"),
...     pl.col("B").filter(pl.col("cars") == "beetle").sum(),
...     pl.col("A").filter(pl.col("B") > 2).sum().over("cars").alias("sum_A_by_cars"),
...     pl.col("A").sum().over("fruits").alias("sum_A_by_fruits"),
...     pl.col("A").reverse().over("fruits").alias("rev_A_by_fruits"),
...     pl.col("A").sort_by("B").over("fruits").alias("sort_A_by_B_by_fruits"),
... )
shape: (5, 8)
┌──────────┬──────────┬──────────────┬─────┬─────────────┬─────────────┬─────────────┬─────────────┐
│ fruits   ┆ cars     ┆ literal_stri ┆ B   ┆ sum_A_by_ca ┆ sum_A_by_fr ┆ rev_A_by_fr ┆ sort_A_by_B │
│ ---      ┆ ---      ┆ ng_fruits    ┆ --- ┆ rs          ┆ uits        ┆ uits        ┆ _by_fruits  │
│ str      ┆ str      ┆ ---          ┆ i64 ┆ ---         ┆ ---         ┆ ---         ┆ ---         │
│          ┆          ┆ str          ┆     ┆ i64         ┆ i64         ┆ i64         ┆ i64         │
╞══════════╪══════════╪══════════════╪═════╪═════════════╪═════════════╪═════════════╪═════════════╡
│ "apple"  ┆ "beetle" ┆ "fruits"     ┆ 11  ┆ 4           ┆ 7           ┆ 4           ┆ 4           │
│ "apple"  ┆ "beetle" ┆ "fruits"     ┆ 11  ┆ 4           ┆ 7           ┆ 3           ┆ 3           │
│ "banana" ┆ "beetle" ┆ "fruits"     ┆ 11  ┆ 4           ┆ 8           ┆ 5           ┆ 5           │
│ "banana" ┆ "audi"   ┆ "fruits"     ┆ 11  ┆ 2           ┆ 8           ┆ 2           ┆ 2           │
│ "banana" ┆ "beetle" ┆ "fruits"     ┆ 11  ┆ 4           ┆ 8           ┆ 1           ┆ 1           │
└──────────┴──────────┴──────────────┴─────┴─────────────┴─────────────┴─────────────┴─────────────┘

SQL

>>> df = pl.scan_csv("docs/data/iris.csv")
>>> ## OPTION 1
>>> # run SQL queries on frame-level
>>> df.sql("""
...	SELECT species,
...	  AVG(sepal_length) AS avg_sepal_length
...	FROM self
...	GROUP BY species
...	""").collect()
shape: (3, 2)
┌────────────┬──────────────────┐
│ species    ┆ avg_sepal_length │
│ ---        ┆ ---              │
│ str        ┆ f64              │
╞════════════╪══════════════════╡
│ Virginica  ┆ 6.588            │
│ Versicolor ┆ 5.936            │
│ Setosa     ┆ 5.006            │
└────────────┴──────────────────┘
>>> ## OPTION 2
>>> # use pl.sql() to operate on the global context
>>> df2 = pl.LazyFrame({
...    "species": ["Setosa", "Versicolor", "Virginica"],
...    "blooming_season": ["Spring", "Summer", "Fall"]
...})
>>> pl.sql("""
... SELECT df.species,
...     AVG(df.sepal_length) AS avg_sepal_length,
...     df2.blooming_season
... FROM df
... LEFT JOIN df2 ON df.species = df2.species
... GROUP BY df.species, df2.blooming_season
... """).collect()

SQL commands can also be run directly from your terminal using the Polars CLI:

# run an inline SQL query
> polars -c "SELECT species, AVG(sepal_length) AS avg_sepal_length, AVG(sepal_width) AS avg_sepal_width FROM read_csv('docs/data/iris.csv') GROUP BY species;"

# run interactively
> polars
Polars CLI v0.3.0
Type .help for help.

> SELECT species, AVG(sepal_length) AS avg_sepal_length, AVG(sepal_width) AS avg_sepal_width FROM read_csv('docs/data/iris.csv') GROUP BY species;

Refer to the Polars CLI repository for more information.

Performance 🚀🚀

Blazingly fast

Polars is very fast. In fact, it is one of the best performing solutions available. See the TPC-H benchmarks results.

Lightweight

Polars is also very lightweight. It comes with zero required dependencies, and this shows in the import times:

  • polars: 70ms
  • numpy: 104ms
  • pandas: 520ms

Handles larger-than-RAM data

If you have data that does not fit into memory, Polars' query engine is able to process your query (or parts of your query) in a streaming fashion. This drastically reduces memory requirements, so you might be able to process your 250GB dataset on your laptop. Collect with collect(streaming=True) to run the query streaming. (This might be a little slower, but it is still very fast!)

Setup

Python

Install the latest Polars version with:

pip install polars

We also have a conda package (conda install -c conda-forge polars), however pip is the preferred way to install Polars.

Install Polars with all optional dependencies.

pip install 'polars[all]'

You can also install a subset of all optional dependencies.

pip install 'polars[numpy,pandas,pyarrow]'

See the User Guide for more details on optional dependencies

To see the current Polars version and a full list of its optional dependencies, run:

pl.show_versions()

Releases happen quite often (weekly / every few days) at the moment, so updating Polars regularly to get the latest bugfixes / features might not be a bad idea.

Rust

You can take latest release from crates.io, or if you want to use the latest features / performance improvements point to the main branch of this repo.

polars = { git = "https://github.com/pola-rs/polars", rev = "<optional git tag>" }

Requires Rust version >=1.79.

Contributing

Want to contribute? Read our contributing guide.

Python: compile Polars from source

If you want a bleeding edge release or maximal performance you should compile Polars from source.

This can be done by going through the following steps in sequence:

  1. Install the latest Rust compiler

  2. Install maturin: pip install maturin

  3. cd py-polars and choose one of the following:

    • make build-release, fastest binary, very long compile times
    • make build-opt, fast binary with debug symbols, long compile times
    • make build-debug-opt, medium-speed binary with debug assertions and symbols, medium compile times
    • make build, slow binary with debug assertions and symbols, fast compile times

    Append -native (e.g. make build-release-native) to enable further optimizations specific to your CPU. This produces a non-portable binary/wheel however.

Note that the Rust crate implementing the Python bindings is called py-polars to distinguish from the wrapped Rust crate polars itself. However, both the Python package and the Python module are named polars, so you can pip install polars and import polars.

Using custom Rust functions in Python

Extending Polars with UDFs compiled in Rust is easy. We expose PyO3 extensions for DataFrame and Series data structures. See more in https://github.com/pola-rs/pyo3-polars.

Going big...

Do you expect more than 2^32 (~4.2 billion) rows? Compile Polars with the bigidx feature flag or, for Python users, install pip install polars-u64-idx.

Don't use this unless you hit the row boundary as the default build of Polars is faster and consumes less memory.

Legacy

Do you want Polars to run on an old CPU (e.g. dating from before 2011), or on an x86-64 build of Python on Apple Silicon under Rosetta? Install pip install polars-lts-cpu. This version of Polars is compiled without AVX target features.

Sponsors

JetBrains logo

Metadata

Release files for polars-nightly 1.5.0.post20240818

For a detailed explanation of source distributions (sdists) and built distributions (wheels), please see the package formats documentation.

Built distributions (wheels)

Table of built distributions (wheels) for polars-nightly 1.5.0.post20240818
File
polars_nightly-1.5.0.post20240818-cp38-abi3-win_amd64.whl CPython 3.8 abi3 Windows x86-64 Details
polars_nightly-1.5.0.post20240818-cp38-abi3-manylinux_2_24_aarch64.whl CPython 3.8 abi3 Linux glibc 2.24+ ARM64 Details
polars_nightly-1.5.0.post20240818-cp38-abi3-manylinux_2_17_x86_64.manylinux2014_x86_64.whl CPython 3.8 abi3 Linux glibc 2.17+ x86-64 Details
polars_nightly-1.5.0.post20240818-cp38-abi3-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl CPython 3.8 abi3 macOS 11.0+ ARM64 Details
polars_nightly-1.5.0.post20240818-cp38-abi3-macosx_10_12_x86_64.whl CPython 3.8 abi3 macOS 10.12+ x86-64 Details

Total release size: 148.4 MB

Release files / polars_nightly-1.5.0.post20240818-cp38-abi3-win_amd64.whl

Download URL polars_nightly-1.5.0.post20240818-cp38-abi3-win_amd64.whl
Size 31.2 MB
Tags CPython 3.8 Windows x86-64 abi3
SHA-256 checksum
How to use checksums
782bcfe5986ddec1fa63da0a66a53a8500f2295a483864787cdbe211dae0dfec
BLAKE2b-256 checksum
How to use checksums
9848ea4f50edc72faeb2742e0dc57a7c8f593470f942ac41857c9a19448fe924
Upload date
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing?
What is trusted publishing?
Yes
Uploaded via twine/5.1.0 CPython/3.12.5

Release files / polars_nightly-1.5.0.post20240818-cp38-abi3-manylinux_2_24_aarch64.whl

Download URL polars_nightly-1.5.0.post20240818-cp38-abi3-manylinux_2_24_aarch64.whl
Size 29.0 MB
Tags CPython 3.8 Linux glibc 2.24+ ARM64 abi3
SHA-256 checksum
How to use checksums
c39ff8cd84d6243deb5ae3106c714c8b0b871dfc2140e7fb7a3854d0ee075411
BLAKE2b-256 checksum
How to use checksums
6dc1d1dc9f7056a2326ae01dba5124c0032d76b5c7689466b337b76c7506b735
Upload date
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing?
What is trusted publishing?
Yes
Uploaded via twine/5.1.0 CPython/3.12.5

Release files / polars_nightly-1.5.0.post20240818-cp38-abi3-manylinux_2_17_x86_64.manylinux2014_x86_64.whl

Download URL polars_nightly-1.5.0.post20240818-cp38-abi3-manylinux_2_17_x86_64.manylinux2014_x86_64.whl
Size 31.4 MB
Tags CPython 3.8 Linux glibc 2.17+ x86-64 abi3
SHA-256 checksum
How to use checksums
72e825b5d060ccfd0ab227336ddb0a54059b03c7b5353afd6b48dd63199fd902
BLAKE2b-256 checksum
How to use checksums
be9b4da1ca0221da442076c5410316207635325d2d789b0a4822b337dc7bf737
Upload date
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing?
What is trusted publishing?
Yes
Uploaded via twine/5.1.0 CPython/3.12.5

Release files / polars_nightly-1.5.0.post20240818-cp38-abi3-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl

Download URL polars_nightly-1.5.0.post20240818-cp38-abi3-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl
Size 26.7 MB
Tags CPython 3.8 abi3 macOS 11.0+ ARM64
SHA-256 checksum
How to use checksums
c38ae2734075a234828e1122b891e13a4873fd3c43ea1d2e40b3e2a9cdc1b9d8
BLAKE2b-256 checksum
How to use checksums
c87e5b9843f7c02d1719ed03603788feedc75dff38698b4b27e6b37c34a9a8dc
Upload date
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing?
What is trusted publishing?
Yes
Uploaded via twine/5.1.0 CPython/3.12.5

Release files / polars_nightly-1.5.0.post20240818-cp38-abi3-macosx_10_12_x86_64.whl

Download URL polars_nightly-1.5.0.post20240818-cp38-abi3-macosx_10_12_x86_64.whl
Size 30.1 MB
Tags CPython 3.8 abi3 macOS 10.12+ x86-64
SHA-256 checksum
How to use checksums
615eec02394397127c3148467b100c76741fedbe6eeb8d46758ed64279550663
BLAKE2b-256 checksum
How to use checksums
38807cc5fce2889e7b5753c17b478f307c53eab32e5d0cd78d32c1b69ea888cb
Upload date
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing?
What is trusted publishing?
Yes
Uploaded via twine/5.1.0 CPython/3.12.5

Release history Release notifications | RSS feed

This release

1.5.0.post20240818 This release

5 release files

Anthropic, PBC Visionary sponsor Bloomberg Visionary sponsor Hudson River Trading Visionary sponsor Meta Visionary sponsor NVIDIA Visionary sponsor Microsoft Sustainability sponsor Depot Continuous Integration AWS Cloud computing and Security Sponsor Datadog Monitoring Fastly CDN Google Download Analytics Sentry Error logging StatusPage Status page