| Rank | River | Continent | Length | Flows into |
|---|
The world's great rivers
A river's length is a slippery number. Follow a different headwater, trace another channel through the delta, or survey in a wet year instead of a dry one, and the total shifts by hundreds of kilometres. These are the commonly cited, approximate figures for Earth's ten longest rivers — each drawn to the same scale, source on the left, sea on the right.
| Rank | River | Continent | Length | Flows into |
|---|
Deeper water, longer river — the shade steps down the ranking from the Nile to the Amur.
Each ribbon swells from source to mouth; its final width follows the square root of approximate mean discharge.
Drifting motes trace the direction of flow, left to right, from spring to sea.
Length along the axis is to scale. Numbers are rounded, approximate and marked ≈.