# GROUP BY

You can use the `GROUP BY` option in a SOQL query to avoid iterating through individual query results. That is, you specify a group of records instead of processing many individual records.

You can use `GROUP BY` with [aggregate functions](/docs/platform/salesforce-soql-sosl/guide/sforce-api-calls-soql-select-agg-functions.md), such as `SUM()` or `MAX()`, to summarize the data and enable you to roll up query results rather than having to process the individual records in your code.

```soql
[GROUP BY fieldGroupByList]
```

fieldGroupByList specifies a list of one or more fields, separated by commas, that you want to group by. If the list of fields in a `SELECT` clause includes an aggregate function, you must include all non-aggregated fields in the `GROUP BY` clause.

For example, to determine how many leads are associated with each `LeadSource` value without using `GROUP BY`, you could run the following query:

```soql
SELECT LeadSource FROM Lead
```

You would then write some code to iterate through the query results and increment counters for each `LeadSource` value. You can use `GROUP BY` to get the same results without the need to write any extra code. For example:

```soql
SELECT LeadSource, COUNT(Name)
FROM Lead
GROUP BY LeadSource
```

You can use a `GROUP BY` clause without an aggregated function to query all the distinct values, including `null`, for an object. The following query returns the distinct set of values stored in the `LeadSource` field.

```soql
SELECT LeadSource
FROM Lead
GROUP BY LeadSource
```