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 PDS-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 >=1.80.

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 1.6.0.post20240903

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 1.6.0.post20240903
File
polars_nightly-1.6.0.post20240903-cp38-abi3-win_amd64.whl CPython 3.8 abi3 Windows x86-64 Details
polars_nightly-1.6.0.post20240903-cp38-abi3-manylinux_2_24_aarch64.whl CPython 3.8 abi3 Linux glibc 2.24+ ARM64 Details
polars_nightly-1.6.0.post20240903-cp38-abi3-manylinux_2_17_x86_64.manylinux2014_x86_64.whl CPython 3.8 abi3 Linux glibc 2.17+ x86-64 Details
polars_nightly-1.6.0.post20240903-cp38-abi3-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl CPython 3.8 abi3 macOS 11.0+ ARM64 Details
polars_nightly-1.6.0.post20240903-cp38-abi3-macosx_10_12_x86_64.whl CPython 3.8 abi3 macOS 10.12+ x86-64 Details

Total release size: 150.1 MB

Release files / polars_nightly-1.6.0.post20240903-cp38-abi3-win_amd64.whl

Download URL polars_nightly-1.6.0.post20240903-cp38-abi3-win_amd64.whl
Size 31.8 MB
Tags CPython 3.8 Windows x86-64 abi3
SHA-256 checksum
How to use checksums
424d71a4f39035d634ce6e8b83b6f2f64219f9225061bcb8856de8ef36c9a898
BLAKE2b-256 checksum
How to use checksums
f10d312be55340eb5c9484e27cd017958a78096a66a07218d669ff9b34c20d69
Upload date
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing?
What is trusted publishing?
Yes
Uploaded via twine/5.1.1 CPython/3.12.5

Release files / polars_nightly-1.6.0.post20240903-cp38-abi3-manylinux_2_24_aarch64.whl

Download URL polars_nightly-1.6.0.post20240903-cp38-abi3-manylinux_2_24_aarch64.whl
Size 28.8 MB
Tags CPython 3.8 Linux glibc 2.24+ ARM64 abi3
SHA-256 checksum
How to use checksums
88433dafcff9155a8545be52f1001bc723033890fb0c6bbd8427e7592f936684
BLAKE2b-256 checksum
How to use checksums
5d54a8dbc54d7bc4905cd4fcb8d5120a1319ec59741e1bedd59efa350dd7b07e
Upload date
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing?
What is trusted publishing?
Yes
Uploaded via twine/5.1.1 CPython/3.12.5

Release files / polars_nightly-1.6.0.post20240903-cp38-abi3-manylinux_2_17_x86_64.manylinux2014_x86_64.whl

Download URL polars_nightly-1.6.0.post20240903-cp38-abi3-manylinux_2_17_x86_64.manylinux2014_x86_64.whl
Size 31.9 MB
Tags CPython 3.8 Linux glibc 2.17+ x86-64 abi3
SHA-256 checksum
How to use checksums
9692914b2dab3cb23629af1739889ee0a2f4a2707fc5f966aaa0b1d17acb3a10
BLAKE2b-256 checksum
How to use checksums
08fb2301ecb391da5eff057dbdb05a887dbc5aa638bea1cb6428e1e861d0ebd1
Upload date
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing?
What is trusted publishing?
Yes
Uploaded via twine/5.1.1 CPython/3.12.5

Release files / polars_nightly-1.6.0.post20240903-cp38-abi3-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl

Download URL polars_nightly-1.6.0.post20240903-cp38-abi3-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl
Size 27.1 MB
Tags CPython 3.8 abi3 macOS 11.0+ ARM64
SHA-256 checksum
How to use checksums
0346f0b2dc0fb458cad3b89787859036cde0b379a86911eab753240e4515119e
BLAKE2b-256 checksum
How to use checksums
2aa810ca82aa5978bb3334c4bf13b23e6474ffada64068bf2f940169136304db
Upload date
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing?
What is trusted publishing?
Yes
Uploaded via twine/5.1.1 CPython/3.12.5

Release files / polars_nightly-1.6.0.post20240903-cp38-abi3-macosx_10_12_x86_64.whl

Download URL polars_nightly-1.6.0.post20240903-cp38-abi3-macosx_10_12_x86_64.whl
Size 30.5 MB
Tags CPython 3.8 abi3 macOS 10.12+ x86-64
SHA-256 checksum
How to use checksums
93f04d6e8a7822d08e30c2df427209acf0c99490227682f4c8a3f5299ae17c8f
BLAKE2b-256 checksum
How to use checksums
acdb90c27bf364319e1dff8d0d1c6794707c40af66b1f9381d9f5cb1a393befe
Upload date
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing?
What is trusted publishing?
Yes
Uploaded via twine/5.1.1 CPython/3.12.5

Release history Release notifications | RSS feed

This release

1.6.0.post20240903 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