About 96.5% of Earth's water is in the oceans. Ice caps, glaciers and permanent snow hold 1.74%, groundwater 1.69%, and lakes, rivers, soil, air and living things together about 0.04%. Edit the chart below or download it.
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| Category | Value | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| Category A | 30 | 30.0% |
| Category B | 25 | 25.0% |
| Category C | 20 | 20.0% |
| Category D | 15 | 15.0% |
| Category E | 10 | 10.0% |
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5
Total Value
100
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pie
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Total Value
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Where Earth's Water Is, Share of All Water by Volume (USGS)
| Slice | Share of all water (%) | Share of the pie | Angle |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oceans, seas and bays | 96.54 | 96.53% | 347.51° |
| Ice caps, glaciers and permanent snow | 1.74 | 1.74% | 6.26° |
| Groundwater | 1.69 | 1.69% | 6.08° |
| Everything else | 0.04 | 0.04% | 0.14° |
| Total | 100.01 | 100% | 360° |
Source: USGS Water Science School, How much water is there on, in, and above the Earth?.
USGS Water Science School, "How much water is there on, in, and above the Earth?" (we read it on October 5, 2026). Its table of one estimate of global water distribution comes from Igor Shiklomanov's chapter "World fresh water resources" in Peter Gleick's Water in Crisis (Oxford University Press, 1993). The total is about 332.5 million cubic miles (1,386 million cubic kilometers).
Note: "Everything else" adds the USGS table's smaller rows: ground ice and permafrost (0.022%), lakes (0.013%), soil moisture (0.001%), atmosphere (0.001%), swamps (0.0008%), rivers (0.0002%) and water in living things (0.0001%). The USGS says its percentages are rounded and may not add to exactly 100.
Oceans, seas and bays hold 96.54% of the water. Add the table's saline groundwater (0.93%) and saline lakes (0.006%) and about 97.5% of all water is salty.
In the USGS table, 68.7% of Earth's fresh water is ice caps, glaciers and permanent snow, and 30.1% is fresh groundwater. Lakes hold 0.26%, soil moisture 0.05%, the atmosphere 0.04% and rivers 0.006%. A second chart of fresh water alone would have 2 big slices and a long tail.
Rivers hold about 509 cubic miles, 0.0002% of all water, yet they supply most of the fresh surface water people use. The smallest slices in a pie chart are not always the least important ones.
Of 13,058 charts downloaded from this site between January 29 and August 18, 2026, 15.8% had four slices, the third most common count. Grouping the USGS table's ten rows into four keeps this one readable.