Delete Documents
On this page
The MongoDB shell provides the following methods to delete documents from a collection:
To delete multiple documents, use
db.collection.deleteMany().To delete a single document, use
db.collection.deleteOne().
The examples on this page reference the Atlas sample dataset. You can create a free Atlas cluster and populate that cluster with sample data to follow along with these examples. To learn more, see Get Started with Atlas.
Delete All Documents
To delete all documents from a collection, pass an empty
filter document {} to the
db.collection.deleteMany() method.
Example
To delete all documents from the sample_mflix.movies collection:
use sample_mflix db.movies.deleteMany({})
The method returns a document with the status of the operation. For
more information and examples, see
deleteMany().
Note
If you want to delete all documents from a large collection, dropping
with the db.collection.drop() method. and recreating the
collection may have faster performance than deleting documents with
the db.collection.deleteMany() method. When you recreate
the collection, you must also recreate any specified collection
parameters such as collection indexes.
Delete All Documents that Match a Condition
You can specify criteria, or filters, that identify the documents to delete. The filters use the same syntax as read operations.
To specify equality conditions, use <field>:<value> expressions in
the query filter document.
To delete all documents that match a deletion criteria, pass a filter
parameter to the deleteMany() method.
Example
To delete all documents from the sample_mflix.movies collection
where the title equals "Titanic":
use sample_mflix db.movies.deleteMany( { title: "Titanic" } )
The method returns a document with the status of the operation. For
more information and examples, see
deleteMany().
Delete Only One Document that Matches a Condition
To delete at most a single document that matches a specified filter
(even though multiple documents may match the specified filter) use the
db.collection.deleteOne() method.
Example
To delete the first document from the sample_mflix.movies
collection where the cast array contains "Brad Pitt":
use sample_mflix db.movies.deleteOne( { cast: "Brad Pitt" } )
Note
MongoDB preserves a natural sort order for documents. This ordering is an internal implementation feature, and you should not rely on any particular structure within it. To learn more, see natural order.
Delete Behavior
To learn more about the specific behavior of deleting documents, see Behavior.
Learn More
To see additional examples of deleting documents, see the following method pages:
To see all available methods to delete documents, see Delete Methods.