The 40 longest ships ever built
Ranked by length overall — from the 488 m Prelude down to Berge Stahl, with the honest asterisk explained.
Open the board →Ship records
Five ranked boards and one tool, compiled from operator and builder data and sourced on every page — with each board ranked in its own honest unit.
The boards
Six ways to rank a ship
The biggest cruise ships in the world
Ranked by gross tonnage — the ships you can actually book, led by Royal Caribbean’s Icon class. The full answer to the most-asked question at sea.
Open the board →The biggest ships by gross tonnage
Ranked by gross tonnage — internal volume, the honest measure for passenger ships and the record Pioneering Spirit owns outright.
Open the board →The biggest container ships
Ranked by nominal capacity in twenty-foot equivalent units — a board that runs from 24,346 down to the 58 boxes that started everything.
Open the board →The biggest tankers & bulk giants
Ranked by deadweight — the tonnes a ship can lift. The top of this board is the half-million-tonne club, and most of it died young.
Open the board →The highest-capacity passenger ships
Ranked by passengers at double occupancy — where the mega-resorts stack up, and where the true liners deliberately do not.
Open the board →The Canal-Fit Checker
Pick any ship and get an instant verdict against Panamax, Neopanamax, Suezmax, Malaccamax, Seawaymax and Chinamax — with the limiting dimension highlighted.
Open the board →