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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/assets/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/assets/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/assets/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(engine='streaming') 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, slow binary with debug assertions and symbols, fast compile times
   • make build-release, fast binary without debug assertions, minimal debug symbols, long compile times
   • make build-nodebug-release, same as build-release but without any debug symbols, slightly faster to compile
   • make build-debug-release, same as build-release but with full debug symbols, slightly slower to compile
   • make build-dist-release, fastest binary, extreme compile times

By default the binary is compiled with optimizations turned on for a modern CPU. Specify LTS_CPU=1 with the command if your CPU is older and does not support e.g. AVX2.

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/polars/tree/main/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.

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