How long is the Yellow River? Length of the Huang He
The Yellow River, or Huang He, is about 5,464 km (3,395 miles) long. It is the second longest river in China after the Yangtze and the sixth in the world.
Lay the Yellow River 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.
Yellow River: about 5,464 km (3,395 miles), about 1.4 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 Yellow River flows
The Yellow River rises in the Bayan Har Mountains of Qinghai province and flows in a great bend across northern China to the Bohai Sea. It owes its name to the yellow loess silt it carries in huge amounts.
The basin covers about 750,000 km², yet the river delivers only about 1,770 m³/s to the sea on average. Much of the basin is dry and water is taken for irrigation, so this long river carries many times less water than the Yangtze.
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.
- Yenisei: about 5,540 km
- Yellow River: about 5,464 km
- Ob-Irtysh: about 5,410 km
On a Mercator map: about 6,800 km
On a Mercator map the Yellow River looks about 6,800 km long (×1.25 its true length). Its course lies at middle latitudes, so the map stretches it by about 25%.
Open the Mercator mapHow long is it really?
Encyclopedias give about 5,464 km. The Yellow River has shifted its lower course many times, and its mouth with it, so its length has also changed within recorded history.
The line on this page's maps is about 4,808 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.
Yellow River: questions and answers
The Yellow River is about 5,464 km (3,395 miles) long according to Encyclopædia Britannica. It is the second longest river in China after the Yangtze.
The river carries huge amounts of yellow loess silt from the Loess Plateau, which colours its water.
The Yellow River rises in the Bayan Har Mountains of Qinghai province in western China.
The Yellow River flows into the Bohai Sea, a gulf of the Yellow Sea.
The Yangtze (about 6,300 km) is longer than the Yellow River (about 5,464 km). The Yellow River also carries more than ten times less water.