Last update: 2025-09-20T00:40:12.000Z
Content:
---
title: "Pipes · Tinybird Docs"
theme-color: "#171612"
description: "Pipes help you to bring your SQL queries together to achieve a purpose, like publishing an endpoint."
inkeep:version: "forward"
---




# Pipes [¶](https://www.tinybird.co/docs/forward/work-with-data/pipes#pipes)

Copy as MD A pipe is a collection of one or more SQL queries. Each query is called a node.

Use Pipes to build features over your data. For example, you can write SQL that joins, aggregates, or otherwise transforms your data and publish the result as an endpoint.




## Nodes [¶](https://www.tinybird.co/docs/forward/work-with-data/pipes#nodes)

A node is a container for a single SQL `SELECT` statement. Nodes live within pipes, and you can have many sequential nodes inside the same pipe. They allow you to break your query logic down into multiple smaller queries. You can then chain nodes together to build the logic incrementally.

A query in a node can read data from a data source, other nodes inside the same pipe, or from endpoint nodes in other pipes. Each node can be developed and tested individually. This makes it much easier to build complex query logic in Tinybird as you avoid creating large monolithic queries with many subqueries.

## Display Limits [¶](https://www.tinybird.co/docs/forward/work-with-data/pipes#display-limits)

When viewing query results in the UI, there is a 5000 character limit for displaying data in a cell value. If a cell contains more than 5000 characters, the data will be truncated. This limit applies only to the UI display and does not affect the actual data or query results returned through API Endpoints.

## Create generic pipes [¶](https://www.tinybird.co/docs/forward/work-with-data/pipes#create-generic-pipes)

Pipes are defined in a .pipe file without a specific `TYPE` . See [Pipe files](/docs/forward/dev-reference/datafiles/pipe-files).

## List your pipes [¶](https://www.tinybird.co/docs/forward/work-with-data/pipes#list-your-pipes)

To list your pipes, run the following command:

tb pipe ls
## Next steps [¶](https://www.tinybird.co/docs/forward/work-with-data/pipes#next-steps)

- Learn about[  Endpoints](/docs/forward/work-with-data/publish-data/endpoints)  .
- Learn about[  Copy pipes](/docs/forward/work-with-data/optimize/copy-pipes)  .
- Learn about[  Materialized views](/docs/forward/work-with-data/optimize/materialized-views)  .


