MS SQL Server - select last N rows

In this article, we would like to show you how to select the last N rows from a table in MS SQL Server.

Quick solution

Ascending order:

SELECT * FROM (
     SELECT TOP N * 
     FROM [table_name] 
	 ORDER BY [column_name] DESC
) subquery
ORDER BY [column_name] ASC;

Descending order:

SELECT TOP N * 
FROM [table_name] 
ORDER BY [column_name] DESC;

Practical example

To show how to select the last N rows from a table, we will use the following table:

Note:

At the end of this article you can find database preparation SQL queries.

Example - ascending order

In this example, we will select the last three users from the users table in ascending order.

Query:

SELECT * FROM (
     SELECT TOP 3 * 
	 FROM [users] 
	 ORDER BY [id] DESC
) subquery
ORDER BY [id] ASC;

Output:

Example - descending order

In this example, we will select the last three users from the users table in descending order.

Query:

SELECT * FROM [users] ORDER BY [id] DESC LIMIT 3;

Output:

Database preparation

create_tables.sql file:

CREATE TABLE [users] (
	[id] INT IDENTITY(1,1),
	[name] VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL,
	[country] VARCHAR(15) NOT NULL,
	PRIMARY KEY ([id])
);

insert_data.sql file:

INSERT INTO [users]
	([name], [country])
VALUES
	('Tom', 'Poland'),
	('Chris', 'Spain'),
	('Jack', 'Spain'),
    ('Kim', 'Vietnam'),
    ('Marco', 'Italy'),
	('Kate', 'Spain'),
	('Nam', 'Vietnam');