R: Count Number of NA Values in Each Column

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You can use the following methods to count the number of NA values in each column of a data frame in R:

Method 1: Count NA Values in Each Column Using Base R

sapply(df, function(x) sum(is.na(x)))

Method 2: Count NA Values in Each Column Using dplyr

library(dplyr)

df %>% summarise(across(everything(), ~ sum(is.na(.))))

The following examples show how to use each method with the following data frame in R:

#create data frame
df frame(team=c('A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E'),
                 points=c(99, 90, 86, 88, NA),
                 assists=c(33, NA, NA, 39, 34),
                 rebounds=c(30, 28, 24, 24, 28))

#view data frame
df

  team points assists rebounds
1    A     99      33       30
2    B     90      NA       28
3    C     86      NA       24
4    D     88      39       24
5    E     NA      34       28

Example 1: Count NA Values in Each Column Using Base R

The following code shows how to count the number of NA values in each column using the sapply() function from base R:

#count NA values in each column
sapply(df, function(x) sum(is.na(x)))

    team   points  assists rebounds 
       0        1        2        0 

From the output we can see:

• The team column has 0 NA values.
• The points column has 1 NA value.
• The assists column has 2 NA values.
• The rebounds column has 0 NA values.

Note: The sapply() function can be used to apply a function to each column in the data frame. In this example, we apply a function that counts the total number of elements equal to NA.

Example 2: Count NA Values in Each Column Using dplyr

The following code shows how to count the number of NA values in each column using the summarise() function from the dplyr package:

#count NA values in each column
sapply(df, function(x) sum(is.na(x)))

    team   points  assists rebounds 
       0        1        2        0 

From the output we can see:

• The team column has 0 NA values.
• The points column has 1 NA value.
• The assists column has 2 NA values.
• The rebounds column has 0 NA values.

These results match the ones from the previous example.

Note: The dplyr method tends to be faster than the base R method when working with extremely large data frames.

Additional Resources

The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in R:

How to Use na.omit in R
How to Use complete.cases in R
How to Remove Empty Rows from Data Frame in R