# Max\_doc\_count in terms aggragation
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/max-doc-count-in-terms-aggragation/131142
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [May 9, 2018, 9:29am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/max-doc-count-in-terms-aggragation/131142 "2018-05-09T09:29:10Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@gilisade](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/gilisade)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2018, 9:29am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/max-doc-count-in-terms-aggragation/131142/1 "2018-05-09T09:29:10Z")
Hi
using Es 5.4
Is there a way to do a max doc count like min doc count in terms agg?
i want to get back only the first 200 (size : 200) buckets that contain max of 2000 doc count .
what i encountered with is this:
i have a terms aggregation
with size 200
ordered by "desc"
then I have a bucket\_selector agg (as the pipeline agg) with the script:
"params.\_count \<= 2000"
what happens is that none of the 200 buckets returned from the terms aggregation has less then 2000 results
when sorting by asc we do get buckets with less then 2000
since ordering by the pipeline agg is impossible i need a way to do the count filtering inside the terms aggregation
what we need can be achieved using composite agg but this is only available in es 6.1 and up
we cannot upgrade our env in the near future
any suggestions ?
---
### Author:  [@polyfractal](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/polyfractal)
#### Post date: [May 10, 2018, 4:43pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/max-doc-count-in-terms-aggragation/131142/2 "2018-05-10T16:43:42Z")
The only safe, correct way to do it without the `composite` aggregation is to sort by `desc` and specify a large enough size that you start getting buckets with \< 2000 docs.
Ordering by ascending `_count` is unreliable and entirely likely to give you incorrect doc counts. The error is unbounded. See the callout in: [https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/search-aggregations-bucket-terms-aggregation.html#search-aggregations-bucket-terms-aggregation-order](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/search-aggregations-bucket-terms-aggregation.html#search-aggregations-bucket-terms-aggregation-order)
It's a feature we'd dearly like to remove, since sorting by \_count ascending is no better than just randomly generating doc counts ☹
Note: there is also a `bucket_sort` pipeline agg which can be used to order the buckets, but you'll still need a large enough size to collect all the correct buckets first.
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2018, 4:43pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/max-doc-count-in-terms-aggragation/131142/3 "2018-06-07T16:43:50Z")
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