This article lists rivers by their average discharge measured in descending order of their water flow rate. Here, only those rivers whose discharge is more than 2,000 m³/s (71,000 cu ft/s) are shown. It can be thought of as a list of the biggest rivers on Earth, measured by a specific metric.

For context, the volume of an Olympic-size swimming pool is 2,500 m³ (88,000 cu ft). The average flow rate at the mouth of the Amazon is sufficient to fill more than 83 such pools each second. The estimated global total for all rivers is 1.2 million m³/s (43 million cu ft/s), of which the Amazon would be approximately 18%.

The global annual runoff into the oceans (38,500–44,200 km³/year) is dominated by runoff into the South Atlantic from eastern South America, into the western Pacific from east Asia, and into the Indian Ocean from India, and southeast Asia. Depending on the estimate, the Amazon alone accounts for 15–18% of the annual freshwater runoff into the oceans.