Techniques are provided for generating execution plans for, and executing, database statements that contain filter subqueries. Upon receiving a database statement that contains a filter subquery, the database server builds an execution plan that includes a filter operation that is fed by a subtree that corresponds to the subquery. The database server performs a cost analysis to determine whether (1) the filter operation should be parallelized, and (2) the subquery tree should be parallelized. Techniques are also described for generating plans and executing queries where (1) both the filter operation and the subquery subtree are parallelized, (2) the filter operation is parallelized but the subquery subtree operation is performed serially, and (3) the filter operation is performed serially but the subquery subtree operation is parallelized.