Get the highest value from WordPress post meta

highest-value-in-wp-post-meta.php

<?php
// WordPress saves post meta values as 'longtext' type 
// and hence, it makes it impossible to fetch the highest value based on a number.
// So I came up with the following solution to get the highest value from the post meta

// CHANGE [YOUR_META_KEY] with yours post meta key
global $wpdb;
$highest_val = $wpdb->get_var( "SELECT
                                    meta_value
                                FROM
                                    wp_postmeta
                                WHERE
                                  meta_key = '[YOUR_META_KEY]'
                                ORDER BY
                                    CAST(meta_value AS UNSIGNED) DESC"
                            );
?>