Which river has the highest water discharge in the world?

The river with the highest water discharge in the world is the Amazon River. It releases an average of roughly 215,000 cubic metres of water per second into the Atlantic Ocean.

That immense flow comes from the Amazon Basin, the largest drainage basin on Earth, which covers approximately 7 million square kilometres across South America. Rainfall is heavy across much of the basin, and thousands of tributaries feed the main river. The Amazon’s discharge represents about 20% of the freshwater carried by the world’s rivers into the oceans.

Near Manaus, the dark waters of the Rio Negro meet the pale, sediment-rich Solimões at the famous Meeting of Waters. Downstream, the river widens dramatically before reaching the Atlantic. It already carries more water than any other river at a point where it has received only part of its eventual flow.

The Amazon is also involved in a separate geographic debate: whether it or the Nile is the world’s longest river system. That dispute depends on how the farthest headwaters and main channel are defined, but it does not affect the Amazon’s clear discharge record.