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 1.7.1.post20240916

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 1.7.1.post20240916
File
polars_nightly-1.7.1.post20240916-cp38-abi3-win_amd64.whl CPython 3.8 abi3 Windows x86-64 Details
polars_nightly-1.7.1.post20240916-cp38-abi3-manylinux_2_24_aarch64.whl CPython 3.8 abi3 Linux glibc 2.24+ ARM64 Details
polars_nightly-1.7.1.post20240916-cp38-abi3-manylinux_2_17_x86_64.manylinux2014_x86_64.whl CPython 3.8 abi3 Linux glibc 2.17+ x86-64 Details
polars_nightly-1.7.1.post20240916-cp38-abi3-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl CPython 3.8 abi3 macOS 11.0+ ARM64 Details
polars_nightly-1.7.1.post20240916-cp38-abi3-macosx_10_12_x86_64.whl CPython 3.8 abi3 macOS 10.12+ x86-64 Details

Total release size: 151.7 MB

Release files / polars_nightly-1.7.1.post20240916-cp38-abi3-win_amd64.whl

Download URL polars_nightly-1.7.1.post20240916-cp38-abi3-win_amd64.whl
Size 32.1 MB
Tags CPython 3.8 Windows x86-64 abi3
SHA-256 checksum
How to use checksums
d51cdf8535dbf395e27faa22c41654db54d4e72e312c7741fbea0bceb8f69954
BLAKE2b-256 checksum
How to use checksums
7cb5526ea9a7f3f7cdd3bd34526d4f487609cbffdfa65362e6e41b71bac98820
Upload date
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing?
What is trusted publishing?
Yes
Uploaded via twine/5.1.1 CPython/3.12.6

Release files / polars_nightly-1.7.1.post20240916-cp38-abi3-manylinux_2_24_aarch64.whl

Download URL polars_nightly-1.7.1.post20240916-cp38-abi3-manylinux_2_24_aarch64.whl
Size 29.1 MB
Tags CPython 3.8 Linux glibc 2.24+ ARM64 abi3
SHA-256 checksum
How to use checksums
07f0eab0539afe7a7f13fdf1125c1b6f64f371fc757adfcb46b773dcdc4f46e6
BLAKE2b-256 checksum
How to use checksums
982bb9d6dab3fce00fed691d8be96ec36f11aeb764257c555ce15bcaa0b28a88
Upload date
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing?
What is trusted publishing?
Yes
Uploaded via twine/5.1.1 CPython/3.12.6

Release files / polars_nightly-1.7.1.post20240916-cp38-abi3-manylinux_2_17_x86_64.manylinux2014_x86_64.whl

Download URL polars_nightly-1.7.1.post20240916-cp38-abi3-manylinux_2_17_x86_64.manylinux2014_x86_64.whl
Size 32.2 MB
Tags CPython 3.8 Linux glibc 2.17+ x86-64 abi3
SHA-256 checksum
How to use checksums
73ef044cd439ad1f232eaf6ca58625abc6356c5f01ddab7baa1aab696dbce83b
BLAKE2b-256 checksum
How to use checksums
f6b0470bf694b254ccad15d5176899f9f784c4b3ce3c542bc5bc8f30a2bfc95a
Upload date
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing?
What is trusted publishing?
Yes
Uploaded via twine/5.1.1 CPython/3.12.6

Release files / polars_nightly-1.7.1.post20240916-cp38-abi3-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl

Download URL polars_nightly-1.7.1.post20240916-cp38-abi3-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl
Size 27.4 MB
Tags CPython 3.8 abi3 macOS 11.0+ ARM64
SHA-256 checksum
How to use checksums
db1d0d570231e42c798fa33bc1c71eadcd80df9b2455b16ca93b0a493288c9ff
BLAKE2b-256 checksum
How to use checksums
71ac8791bae84b0bbe17620229e1c9bfc3154183f16fce49611d7384db449e3c
Upload date
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing?
What is trusted publishing?
Yes
Uploaded via twine/5.1.1 CPython/3.12.6

Release files / polars_nightly-1.7.1.post20240916-cp38-abi3-macosx_10_12_x86_64.whl

Download URL polars_nightly-1.7.1.post20240916-cp38-abi3-macosx_10_12_x86_64.whl
Size 30.8 MB
Tags CPython 3.8 abi3 macOS 10.12+ x86-64
SHA-256 checksum
How to use checksums
e1e827c31cb73cf8ea70070e3368f75fbbef3a138c70c60a93f8d8c9cdaa39b5
BLAKE2b-256 checksum
How to use checksums
c35ac612c85cc02798c883a9f764040090dad328f0b96dc37163fe932cbc84f7
Upload date
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing?
What is trusted publishing?
Yes
Uploaded via twine/5.1.1 CPython/3.12.6

Release history Release notifications | RSS feed

This release

1.7.1.post20240916 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