Docs Home → Develop Applications → MongoDB Manual

Create a Compound Index

On this page

Restriction

Before You Begin
Procedure
Results
Learn More

Compound indexes are indexes that contain references to multiple fields. Compound indexes improve performance for queries on exactly the fields in the index or fields in the index prefix. Indexing commonly queried fields increases the chances of covering those queries, meaning MongoDB can satisfy the query entirely with the index, without examining documents.

To create a compound index, use the db.collection.createIndex() method:

db.<collection>.createIndex( {
   <field1>: <sortOrder>,
   <field2>: <sortOrder>,
   ...
   <fieldN>: <sortOrder>
} )

Restriction

You can specify up to 32 fields in a single compound index.

Before You Begin

Create a students collection that contains these documents:

db.students.insertMany([
   {
      "name": "Alice",
      "gpa": 3.6,
      "location": { city: "Sacramento", state: "California" }
   },
   {
      "name": "Bob",
      "gpa": 3.2,
      "location": { city: "Albany", state: "New York" }
   }
])

Procedure

The following operation creates a compound index containing the name and gpa fields:

db.students.createIndex( {
   name: 1,
   gpa: -1
} )

In this example:

The index on name is ascending (1).
The index on gpa is descending (-1).

Results

The created index supports queries that select on:

Both name and gpa fields.
Only the name field, because name is a prefix of the compound index.

For example, the index supports these queries:

db.students.find( { name: "Alice", gpa: 3.6 } )
db.students.find( { name: "Bob" } )

The index does not support queries on only the gpa field, because gpa is not part of the index prefix. For example, the index does not support this query:

db.students.find( { gpa: { $gt: 3.5 } } )

Learn More

To learn how to create efficient compound indexes, see The ESR (Equality, Sort, Range) Rule.
To learn how sort order (ascending or descending) impacts performance of compound indexes, see Use Indexes to Sort Query Results.
To learn about other index types, see Index Types.
To learn what properties you can specify for indexes, see Index Properties.

← Compound Indexes

Compound Index Sort Order →