Five Newest Customers — LIMIT and OFFSET in SQL

The problem

Brightlane's customer success team is onboarding a new account manager who wants to review the most recent sign-ups first.

Write a query to return the ID, name, and email of the 5 most recently registered customers.

Assumptions:

The customers table contains every customer Brightlane has on file.
The created_at column records when each customer registered.

Output:

One row per customer, with columns id, name, and email, sorted by created_at descending and capped at 5 rows.

Schema · ecommerce 5 tables

categories

id integer

name text

parent_id? integer

products

id integer

name text

category_id integer

price numeric

stock_qty integer

attributes? jsonb

order_items

id integer

order_id integer

product_id integer

quantity integer

unit_price numeric

customers

id integer

name text

email text

city? text

country text

created_at timestamptz

is_active boolean

orders

id integer

customer_id integer

ordered_at timestamptz

status text

total_amount numeric

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Solution query

SELECT
  id,
  name,
  email
FROM
  customers
ORDER BY
  created_at DESC
LIMIT
  5

The shape

Sorting created_at descending puts the newest registrations at the top of the result, and LIMIT 5 cuts the output at the row count the new account manager actually wants to see.

Clause by clause

SELECT id, name, email picks the three columns the briefing needs.
FROM customers reads the full customer file. Filtering happens later in the pipeline.
ORDER BY created_at DESC sorts so the most recent created_at comes first. Descending flips "earliest first" into "most recent first." Tom Mann at id 70 lands at the top — the most recently registered customer.
LIMIT 5 caps the output at five rows. PostgreSQL completes the sort, hands back the first five, and stops — every customer past Omar Jensen at row 5 is left out.

Why the sort matters

Without ORDER BY, LIMIT 5 would still return five rows, but which five would be up to the execution plan. Run the query twice and the result could change. Pairing LIMIT with ORDER BY created_at DESC is what turns "five rows" into "the five most recent rows" — a sort key matched to the question the account manager is asking.

You practiced capping a sorted result set with LIMIT. LIMIT is the recurring shape behind every "top N" or "most recent N" query — it operates on whatever order ORDER BY produced, so the sort key is what makes the cap meaningful.

Return the ID, name, and email of the 5 most recently registered customers

The shape

Clause by clause

Why the sort matters

Reading explains SQL. Writing it, over and over with instant feedback, is what makes you fluent.