Thread: Outer cost higher than the inner cost

Hello all postgres developers,

Recently pg started to make a query plan, which I can not understand.

The pan is here: https://explain.depesz.com/s/Lvw0#source

The interesting part is at the top:

```

Aggregate (cost=1132443.98..1132443.99 rows=1 width=24) (actual rows=1 loops=1) 

    -> Merge Join (cost=1127516.99..1131699.33 rows=372323 width=24) (actual rows=642956 loops=1) 

        Merge Cond: (parent.volume_id = volume.id)

        -> Merge Join (cost=1127516.66..7430940.30 rows=372323 width=40) (actual rows=642956 loops=1)

        

        ...

        

        -> Index Only Scan using volume_pkey on volume (cost=0.06..18.72 rows=1060 width=8) (actual rows=1011 loops=1)

         Heap Fetches: 23

```

What bothers me is that the inner plan cost (7430940) is higher than the outer plan cost (1131699). 

And I wonder how that is possible. There is no limit in the query that would prevent PG from reading all rows coming out from inner Merge Join. cursor_tuple_fraction is 1.

The query is similar to: (there were more joins, but they were rejected by the planner)

```

SELECT CAST(count(*) AS BIGINT) AS COUNT
  FROM
    (SELECT file.id
     FROM sf.file_current AS FILE
     JOIN sf.dir_current AS parent ON parent.id = file.parent_id
     AND parent.volume_id = file.volume_id
     JOIN sf_volumes.volume AS volume ON file.volume_id = volume.id
     WHERE (parent.volume_id = 1011
            AND parent.ancestor_ids && ARRAY[151188430]::BIGINT[]
            OR file.volume_id = 453)
       AND file.type = 32768
       AND file.volume_id IN (1011, 453)
       AND parent.volume_id IN (1011, 453)) AS fsentry_query

```

All non-standard configuration params are in the attachment.