How to Efficiently Retrieve Top N Rows per Group in PostgreSQL

This article explains how to extract the top N records for each group in PostgreSQL, compares the slow window‑function approach with a fast recursive‑CTE and set‑returning function solution, and shows performance results dropping from over 20 seconds to under half a second.

PostgreSQLRecursive CTETop N per group

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How to Efficiently Retrieve Top N Rows per Group in PostgreSQL