PostgreSQL: Select Rows Where Date is Greater Than

Often in PostgreSQL you may want to select rows where a date is greater than a specific date.

You can use the following basic syntax to do so:

SELECT *
FROM emp
WHERE start_date > '2023-10-01'::date;

This particular example will select all rows from the table named emp where the date in the start_date column is greater than (i.e. more recent than) October 1, 2023.

Note: We use the syntax ::date to convert the string ‘2023-10-01’ to a date that is recognized by PostgreSQL.

The following example shows how to use this syntax in practice.

Example: How to Select Rows Where Date is Greater Than in PostgreSQL

Suppose that we create the following table named emp that contains information about various employees at some company including their starting date and their total sales made:

-- create table named 'emp'
CREATE TABLE emp (
  empID INT PRIMARY KEY,
  start_date DATE,
  sales INT
);

-- add rows to the table 
INSERT INTO emp VALUES (0001, '2021-04-01', 134);
INSERT INTO emp VALUES (0002, '2022-07-01', 201);
INSERT INTO emp VALUES (0003, '2022-08-15', 155);
INSERT INTO emp VALUES (0004, '2022-09-01', 98);
INSERT INTO emp VALUES (0005, '2023-11-23', 65);
INSERT INTO emp VALUES (0006, '2024-02-20', 52);
INSERT INTO emp VALUES (0007, '2024-05-15', 50);

-- view all rows in table
SELECT * FROM emp;

 empid | start_date | sales 
-------+------------+-------
     1 | 2021-04-01 |   134
     2 | 2022-07-01 |   201
     3 | 2022-08-15 |   155
     4 | 2022-09-01 |    98
     5 | 2023-11-23 |    65
     6 | 2024-02-20 |    52
     7 | 2024-05-15 |    50

We can use the following syntax to select all rows where the start_date column is greater than (i.e. more recent than) October 1, 2023:

SELECT *
FROM emp
WHERE start_date > '2023-10-01'::date;

 empid | start_date | sales 
-------+------------+-------
     5 | 2023-11-23 |    65
     6 | 2024-02-20 |    52
     7 | 2024-05-15 |    50

Notice that this returns three rows from the table.

We can see that each of the dates in the start_date column of  the resulting table are indeed greater than (i.e. more recent than) October 1, 2023.

Feel free to change the date specified in the WHERE statement to filter rows based on date in your own table.

Note: To filter for dates that are greater than or equal to a specific date you can use the >= operator instead.

Additional Resources

The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in PostgreSQL:

PostgreSQL: How to Select Rows in Date Range
PostgreSQL: How to Select the Last Row per Group
PostgreSQL: How to Calculate Difference Between Rows