How long is the Amazon River? Length and water volume
The Amazon is about 6,400 km (4,000 miles) long, and some measurements put it at almost 7,000 km. It is the second longest river in the world and by far the largest by the water it carries.
Lay the Amazon over your country
The river and a country at one scale. Pick a country, drag the river or switch the globe to the Mercator map.
Amazon: about 6,400 km (4,000 miles), about 1.6 times the straight-line distance from New York to Los Angeles (about 3,940 km).
Drag the river with your finger or mouse. It moves over the globe without changing shape or length, and its north stays up. The globe keeps the true proportions; on the Mercator map you can see how a river moved north grows.
Where the Amazon flows
The Amazon begins in the Andes of southern Peru, not far from the Pacific Ocean, and flows east across almost the whole continent to the Atlantic. Its basin covers about 7.05 million km², roughly two fifths of South America.
At its mouth the Amazon carries about 210,000 m³/s of water on average. That is almost one fifth of all the water the world's rivers deliver to the oceans, and more than the next seven largest rivers combined.
Rivers of similar length, straightened
Rivers drawn at one scale. Straighten them to compare their lengths and see how they look on a Mercator map.
On a Mercator map: about 6,400 km
On a Mercator map the Amazon looks about 6,400 km long (×1.01 its true length). Its course lies close to the equator, so the map barely stretches it.
Open the Mercator mapHow long is it really?
The most widely quoted length is about 6,400 km. A Brazilian measurement in 2007, taken from Apacheta Creek in the Andes and with a different mouth, gave about 6,992 km. The choice of source and mouth explains the gap, and why the Amazon is sometimes presented as the longest river in the world.
The line on this page's maps is about 5,245 km long, shorter than the sources say, because a 1:10 million map smooths the bends and the mouth. That is why lengths here come from the sources, not from the drawing.
Amazon: questions and answers
The Amazon is about 6,400 km (4,000 miles) long according to Encyclopædia Britannica and the USGS. A 2007 measurement from a different source and with a different mouth gave about 6,992 km (4,345 miles).
The most distant sources of the Amazon lie in the Andes of southern Peru, in the upper reaches of the Apurímac and Ucayali rivers. Their exact position is still debated.
The Amazon flows into the Atlantic Ocean in northern Brazil, almost on the equator.
The main stem of the Amazon flows through Peru, Colombia and Brazil. Its basin covers parts of eight South American countries and French Guiana.
About 210,000 m³/s at the mouth on average, almost one fifth of the water the world's rivers deliver to the oceans. The next river on that list, the Congo, carries about 41,000 m³/s.