diff --git a/src/sentry/api/endpoints/organization_events_stats.py b/src/sentry/api/endpoints/organization_events_stats.py
index f042624ba95d..6a3fd99ee188 100644
--- a/src/sentry/api/endpoints/organization_events_stats.py
+++ b/src/sentry/api/endpoints/organization_events_stats.py
@@ -29,6 +29,7 @@
     get_trace_metric_from_request,
 )
 from sentry.search.eap.types import SearchResolverConfig
+from sentry.search.events.fields import is_function
 from sentry.search.events.types import SnubaParams
 from sentry.snuba import (
     discover,
@@ -305,6 +306,8 @@ def get_rpc_config():
                 if "timestamp" in raw_groupby:
                     raise ParseError("Cannot group by timestamp")
                 if use_rpc:
+                    if all(is_function(column) for column in raw_groupby):
+                        raise ParseError("topEvents requires at least one non-aggregate field")
                     return scoped_dataset.run_top_events_timeseries_query(
                         params=snuba_params,
                         query_string=query,
diff --git a/tests/snuba/api/endpoints/test_organization_events_stats_span_indexed.py b/tests/snuba/api/endpoints/test_organization_events_stats_span_indexed.py
index 5728571ed1af..792fd67b711b 100644
--- a/tests/snuba/api/endpoints/test_organization_events_stats_span_indexed.py
+++ b/tests/snuba/api/endpoints/test_organization_events_stats_span_indexed.py
@@ -719,6 +719,32 @@ def test_top_events_with_no_data(self) -> None:
         )
         assert response.status_code == 200, response.content
 
+    def test_top_events_without_groupby(self) -> None:
+        self.store_spans(
+            [
+                self.create_span(
+                    {"sentry_tags": {"op": "db"}},
+                    start_ts=self.day_ago + timedelta(minutes=1),
+                ),
+            ],
+        )
+
+        response = self._do_request(
+            data={
+                "start": self.day_ago,
+                "end": self.day_ago + timedelta(minutes=6),
+                "interval": "1m",
+                "yAxis": "p95(span.duration)",
+                "field": ["p95(span.duration)"],
+                "query": "span.op:db",
+                "dataset": "spans",
+                "excludeOther": 0,
+                "topEvents": 10,
+            },
+        )
+        assert response.status_code == 400, response.content
+        assert response.data["detail"] == "topEvents requires at least one non-aggregate field"
+
     def test_count_unique_nans(self) -> None:
         self.store_span(
             self.create_span(start_ts=self.two_days_ago + timedelta(minutes=1)),