The Amazon River has the highest discharge of any river in the world. It carries an average of roughly 215,000 cubic metres of water per second to the Atlantic, vastly exceeding the discharge of other major rivers.
That enormous flow comes from the Amazon Basin, the world’s largest drainage basin, which covers about 7 million square kilometres across South America. More than 1,000 tributaries feed the river, including the Madeira, Negro, Tapajós, Xingu, Marañón, and Ucayali.
The Amazon accounts for about 20% of the world’s river water that reaches the oceans. Its discharge varies substantially with seasonal rainfall, but even in comparatively upstream sections it can exceed the flow of any other river.
The Nile is sometimes compared with the Amazon because of a long-running dispute over which river is longer. That debate concerns length, not discharge: on water volume, the Amazon is the clear record-holder.