# Limit Execution Time Of Statements

You can limit the amount of time that postgres will execute a statement by setting a hard timeout. By default the timeout is 0 (see `show statement_timeout;`) which means statements will be given as much time as they need.

If you do want to limit your statements, to say, 1 second, you can set the execution time like so

```sql
> set statement_timeout = '1s';
SET
> show statement_timeout;
 statement_timeout
-------------------
 1s
(1 row)
```

Any queries taking longer than 1 second will be aborted with the following message output

```
ERROR:  canceling statement due to statement timeout
```


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