# Terms performance vs many should clauses
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/terms-performance-vs-many-should-clauses/108371
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [November 20, 2017, 11:20am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/terms-performance-vs-many-should-clauses/108371 "2017-11-20T11:20:35Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Aharon\_Levine](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Aharon_Levine)
#### Post date: [November 20, 2017, 11:20am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/terms-performance-vs-many-should-clauses/108371/1 "2017-11-20T11:20:35Z")
Hi
Can someone please help me understand the performance difference between these 2 queries:
#1 Query with 'terms'
> {
> "query": {
> "bool": {
> "filter": [
> {
> "term": {
> "service\_id": "12345"
> }
> },
> {
> "term": {
> "name": "hello123"
> }
> },
> {
> "terms": {
> "date": [1501056000000,1500192000000,1501228800000,1500969600000,1499414400000,1499241600000,1500883200000,1501142400000,1502092800000,1500364800000,1503561600000]
> }
> }
> ]
> }
> },
> "size":50
> }
#2 Query with 'should'
> {
> "query": {
> "bool": {
> "filter": [
> {
> "term": {
> "service\_id": "12345"
> }
> },
> {
> "term": {
> "name": "hello123"
> }
> },{
> "bool":{
> "should":[
> {
> "term": {
> "date": 1501315200000
> }
> },
> {
> "term": {
> "date": 1499846400000
> }
> },
> {
> "term": {
> "date": 1499328000000
> }
> },
> {
> "term": {
> "date": 1500710400000
> }
> },
> {
> "term": {
> "date": 1500796800000
> }
> },
> {
> "term": {
> "date": 1498982400000
> }
> },
> {
> "term": {
> "date": 1500883200000
> }
> },
> {
> "term": {
> "date": 1500624000000
> }
> },
> {
> "term": {
> "date": 1499155200000
> }
> }
> ]
> }
> }
> ]
>
> ```
> }
> },
>
> ```
>
> "size":50
> }
We're running on Elasticsearch 5.4 with a relatively large index,
The 'terms' approach (#1) takes around 4 seconds while the 'should' approach (#2) returns in 40ms!
Obviously I'm randomizing the requested date fields each time so that the results are not cached.
I intuitively thought that #1 should be faster (its alot cleaner to write) ?
---
### Author:  [@jpountz](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/jpountz)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2017, 2:18pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/terms-performance-vs-many-should-clauses/108371/2 "2017-11-21T14:18:48Z")
Can you share the `profile` (run the query with profile:true) in both cases?
---
### Author:  [@Aharon\_Levine](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Aharon_Levine)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2017, 4:53pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/terms-performance-vs-many-should-clauses/108371/3 "2017-11-21T16:53:10Z")
Well, this is embarrassing ...
I'm rerunning the queries now and I can't replicate the behavior , they both perform very similar to each-other now 😳
Really not sure what happened, I'm sure I wasn't hallucinating before,
Thanks for the concern
---
### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [December 19, 2017, 4:53pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/terms-performance-vs-many-should-clauses/108371/4 "2017-12-19T16:53:38Z")
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