How does EXPLAIN differ from EXPLAIN ANALYZE?

EXPLAIN and EXPLAIN ANALYZE are commands used to analyze the execution of SQL queries, but they differ in the depth of information provided.

• EXPLAIN shows the execution plan of the query, i.e., how the DBMS intends to execute it (for example, which indexes to use, the order of operations, join methods). This is a static analysis without actually executing the query.

• EXPLAIN ANALYZE not only shows the execution plan but also executes the query, collecting real statistics: execution time of each step, number of processed rows, etc. This helps understand how well the plan matches the actual behavior and where bottlenecks might be.

Example in PostgreSQL:

EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM users WHERE age > 30;
EXPLAIN ANALYZE SELECT * FROM users WHERE age > 30;

The first shows the plan, the second — the plan with real metrics.