SQL cheat sheet

SQL Cheat Sheet for Beginners

Learn SQL with this beginner-friendly SQL cheat sheet. Whether you’re exploring data in Metabase, practicing SQL queries, or brushing up on the basics, this cheat sheet gives you all the essential SQL commands.

For the data team, it’s a great resource to share with business users so they realize SQL is just asking the database questions and start pulling their own data without waiting for your team.

Example Data

We’ll use two tables throughout this cheat sheet.

customers

orders

Getting data

Use SELECT and FROM to choose data from a table.

Get all columns from a table

SELECT *
FROM customers;

Get specific columns

SELECT customer_name
FROM orders;

Get unique values from a column

SELECT DISTINCT country
FROM customers;

Filtering data

Use WHERE to filter rows by conditions.

Filter rows above a certain amount

SELECT *
FROM orders
WHERE amount > 100;

Filter rows matching multiple conditions

SELECT *
FROM orders
WHERE order_date > '2025-08-06'
  AND amount > 100;

Filter rows matching either condition

SELECT *
FROM customers
WHERE country = 'USA'
   OR country = 'Canada';

Filter rows by a list of values

SELECT *
FROM customers
WHERE country IN ('USA', 'Canada');

Exclude rows with specific values

SELECT *
FROM customers
WHERE country NOT IN ('USA', 'Canada');

Filter rows within a range

SELECT *
FROM orders
WHERE amount BETWEEN 50 AND 200;

Filter rows by text patterns

SELECT *
FROM customers
WHERE customer_name LIKE 'A%';

Filter rows by date

SELECT *
FROM orders
WHERE order_date >= '2025-08-06';

Aggregating data

Use COUNT, SUM, AVG, and GROUP BY to summarize data.

Count all rows

SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM orders;

Count distinct values

SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT customer_id)
FROM orders;

Calculate sum

SELECT SUM(amount)
FROM orders;

Calculate average value

SELECT AVG(amount)
FROM orders;

Group rows by a column

SELECT country, COUNT(*)
FROM customers
GROUP BY country;

Group rows and calculate sums

SELECT customer_id, SUM(amount)
FROM orders
GROUP BY customer_id;

Filter grouped results

SELECT customer_id, SUM(amount)
FROM orders
GROUP BY customer_id
HAVING SUM(amount) > 100;

Use CASE for conditional logic

SELECT order_id, amount,
  CASE
    WHEN amount > 100 THEN 'High'
    ELSE 'Low'
  END AS order_size
FROM orders;

Organizing Results

Sort results with ORDER BY, restrict them with LIMIT.

Sort rows in ascending order

SELECT *
FROM orders
ORDER BY order_date;

Sort rows in descending order

SELECT *
FROM orders
ORDER BY amount DESC;

Restrict the number of rows returned

SELECT *
FROM customers
LIMIT 3;

Sort and return only the top results

SELECT order_id, amount
FROM orders
ORDER BY amount DESC
LIMIT 3;

Sort rows by multiple columns

SELECT customer_name, country
FROM customers
ORDER BY country ASC, customer_name ASC;

Skip rows with OFFSET

SELECT *
FROM orders
ORDER BY order_date
LIMIT 3 OFFSET 2;

More SQL resources

This cheat sheet is a great way to dip your toes into SQL, but once you’re comfortable with the basics, you may want to explore more advanced techniques and dive deeper into data analysis. We’ve got you covered there with our Learn SQL path, which includes articles like:

• SQL filtering by text
• SQL filtering by date
• Combining tables with SQL UNION
• Best practices for writing SQL queries
• Debugging SQL syntax errors
• And much more: Learn SQL