# Delete an nonexistent document
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/delete-an-nonexistent-document/232073
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [May 11, 2020, 4:16pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/delete-an-nonexistent-document/232073 "2020-05-11T16:16:37Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@ekrx](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/ekrx)
#### Post date: [May 11, 2020, 4:16pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/delete-an-nonexistent-document/232073/1 "2020-05-11T16:16:37Z")
I would like to understand what are the implications of sending a delete by id for a document that does not exist. We have such case where we are sending delete operations for a big number of documents where almost 90% of those have been deleted previously or they dont exist.
The other alternative is to only send deletes for the document that do exists but that would require doing a get before delete, which I dont think is better.
Thank you
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### Author:  [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)
#### Post date: [May 11, 2020, 4:38pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/delete-an-nonexistent-document/232073/2 "2020-05-11T16:38:01Z")
Welcome!
There is no consequence for the data.
It's just a useless HTTP rest request which is sent to the cluster.
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### Author:  [@ekrx](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/ekrx)
#### Post date: [May 11, 2020, 4:46pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/delete-an-nonexistent-document/232073/3 "2020-05-11T16:46:42Z")
yes, for the data nothing will happen, but in terms of resources and operations. which would cost more to the cluster ?
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### Author:  [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)
#### Post date: [May 11, 2020, 5:11pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/delete-an-nonexistent-document/232073/4 "2020-05-11T17:11:40Z")
Yes. A request is a request that needs to be processed by the cluster.
If you are sending 1m of DELETE requests per second for example, you can easily imagine that there is a cost of answering all those requests.
So in a sense, it has a cost.
But it should not be hard to test your scenario against a cluster to see what is the actual cost with your real use case.
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### Author:  [@ekrx](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/ekrx)
#### Post date: [May 11, 2020, 7:33pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/delete-an-nonexistent-document/232073/5 "2020-05-11T19:33:55Z")
Deletes are expensive. How is it different from a delete of a nonexistent document ?
How is a delete of nonexistent compared to a get?
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### Author:  [@Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Christian_Dahlqvist)
#### Post date: [May 11, 2020, 7:40pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/delete-an-nonexistent-document/232073/6 "2020-05-11T19:40:59Z")
A delete causes Elasticsearch to first check if the document exists and then writing a tombstone record if it is. I don't think the document need to be retrieved from disk though, so I would expect this should be more efficient that first performing a get followed by a delete if the document exists.
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2020, 7:40pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/delete-an-nonexistent-document/232073/7 "2020-06-08T19:40:59Z")
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