# DELETE

The `DELETE` command deletes rows in a table.

## Syntax

```
DELETE FROM tbl_name
    [WHERE expr]
    [LIMIT row_count]

DELETE tbl_name FROM table_references
    [WHERE expr]
    [LIMIT row_count]

```

For information on using the `RETURNING` clause refer [DELETE ... RETURNING](https://docs.singlestore.com/db/v9.1/reference/sql-reference/data-manipulation-language-dml/delete-returning.md)

## Arguments

**table\_references**

One or more tables to reference during the delete operation. Refer to the [SELECT](https://docs.singlestore.com/db/v9.1/reference/sql-reference/data-manipulation-language-dml/select.md) statement documentation for full definition of `table_references`.

**tbl\_name**

Table from which rows will be deleted.

**where\_condition**

One or more expression that evaluates to true for each row to be deleted.

**row\_count**

The maximum number of rows that can be deleted.

## Remarks

* The `DELETE` statement deletes rows from `tbl_name` and returns the number of deleted rows.
* Although `DELETE` supports referencing multiple tables using either joins or subqueries, SingleStore only supports deleting from one table in a `DELETE` statement.
* If the `maximum_table_memory` limit has been reached, `DELETE` queries can still be executed to remove data from the table, but large `DELETE` queries may fail if the `maximum_memory` limit has been reached.
* Caution should be taken as `DELETE` queries allocate extra memory to mark rows as deleted. For rowstore tables, this equates to roughly 40 + 8\**number\_of\_indexes* bytes per deleted row. For columnstore tables, the memory usage will be lower because of how rows are marked to be deleted (roughly *num\_rows\_in\_table*/8 bytes if you delete a row in every segment file in the table).
* Table memory can be freed when the `DELETE` command is run. For information on when/how much table memory is freed when this command is run, see [Memory Management](https://docs.singlestore.com/db/v9.1/user-and-cluster-administration/maintain-your-cluster/managing-memory/freeing-table-memory.md).
* If the table is narrow, such as containing a small number of int columns, `DELETE` queries will show up as a relatively large spike in memory usage compared to the size of the table.
* The memory for a deleted row is reclaimed after the transaction commits and the memory is freed asynchronously by the garbage collector.
* If you need to delete all records from a large table, use `TRUNCATE` instead. `TRUNCATE` does not incur the memory penalty of `DELETE`; however, if you do need to run `DELETE` over a large number of rows *in a rowstore table*, perform `DELETE`s in smaller batches using `LIMIT` to minimize the additional memory usage.
* This command must be run on the master aggregator or a child aggregator node (see [Cluster Management Commands](https://docs.singlestore.com/db/v9.1/reference/sql-reference/cluster-management-commands.md)).
* Transactions that span more than one database are not supported. An attempt to write to multiple databases within a single transaction fails with the following error: `Feature 'Cross-database transactions is not supported by SingleStore.`
* For performance limitations refer to [UPDATE](https://docs.singlestore.com/db/v9.1/reference/sql-reference/data-manipulation-language-dml/update/#section-idm234434575739231.md)
* Refer to the [Permissions Matrix](https://docs.singlestore.com/db/v9.1/reference/sql-reference/security-management-commands/permissions-matrix.md) for the required permissions.

## Example

```sql
DELETE FROM mytbl WHERE seq = 1;

DELETE FROM mytable LIMIT 100000;

DELETE FROM mytbl
  WHERE id IN (SELECT id FROM myother) LIMIT 10;

DELETE t_rec FROM t_rec JOIN t_invalid
  WHERE t_rec.id = t_invalid.id;

DELETE t_rec FROM t_rec JOIN
  (SELECT id FROM t_rec ORDER BY score LIMIT 10)temp
  WHERE t_rec.id=temp.id;

DELETE b FROM a, b, c
  WHERE a.name = b.name OR b.name = c.name;

DELETE x FROM looooooooooongName as x, y
  WHERE x.id = y.id;

```

***

Modified at: June 11, 2026

Source: [/db/v9.1/reference/sql-reference/data-manipulation-language-dml/delete/](https://docs.singlestore.com/db/v9.1/reference/sql-reference/data-manipulation-language-dml/delete/)

(An index of the documentation is available at /llms.txt)