MySQL - count rows in column

In this article, we would like to show you how to count rows in a column in MySQL.

Quick solution:

SELECT COUNT(`column_name`)
FROM `table_name`;

Practical example

To show how to count distinct values, we will use the following table:

Note:

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

Example

In this example, we will count the number of unique countries in users table.

Query:

SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT(`country`)) AS `unique_countries`
FROM `users`;

Output:

Database preparation

create_tables.sql file:

CREATE TABLE `users` (
	`id` INT(10) UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
	`name` VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL,
	`surname` VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL,
	`email` VARCHAR(50),
	PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
);

insert_data.sql file:

INSERT INTO `users`
	( `name`, `surname`, `email`)
VALUES
	('John', 'Stewart', 'john@email.com'),
	('Chris', 'Brown', NULL),
	('Kate', 'Lewis', NULL),
	('Ailisa', 'Gomez', 'ailisa@email.com'),
	('Gwendolyn', 'James', NULL),
	('Simon', 'Collins', NULL),
	('Taylor', 'Martin', NULL),
	('Andrew', 'Thompson', 'andrew@email.com');