What does the $limit stage do?

The $limit stage restricts the number of documents passed further down the pipeline. It's the analog of LIMIT in SQL.

#How this works

• receives a stream of documents
• lets through only the specified number
• filters out the rest

#Example

Only the first 10 documents continue down the pipeline.

#Why it's used

• to avoid processing unnecessary data
• for paginated output (together with $skip)
• to optimize the pipeline by reducing the load on later stages

#Summary

$limit is the stage that simply "trims" the stream and passes only the needed number of documents onward.