Challenger Deep at a glance
- 10,927 mdeep in the grid
- Deeptype of feature
- 11.37° N, 142.59° Elisted point
- Federated States of Micronesianearest country, about 287 km
- 10,984 mWikidata's own depth
- 2 of 24deepest of the deeps in our list
Challenger Deep is a deep. In the GEBCO grid it reaches 10,927 m below sea level. That figure is the deepest cell in the grid within 20 km of its listed point. It lies at the southern end of the Mariana Trench, and crewed submersibles have reached its bottom. The nearest country in our list is Federated States of Micronesia, about 287 km from its listed point.
Open the main map at the deepest cell and tap anywhere to read the depth.
How deep is the Challenger Deep?
The grid figure is 10,927 m. We measured it as the deepest cell in the grid within 20 km of its listed point. The cell is at 11.37° N, 142.60° E. The GEBCO_2026 grid has a value every 15 arc-seconds, about 460 m at the equator, so a very narrow feature can be a little deeper or shallower in reality than any grid cell shows.
Wikidata, the open database this feature's name comes from, gives a depth of 10,984 m. That is within 57 m of the grid figure.
Among the 24 deeps in our list it ranks 2nd by depth. The list is the named features on Wikidata with a position at sea, so it is not every deep in the world.
Why Challenger Deep depth figures differ
Published depths for the Challenger Deep and the Mariana Trench vary by tens of metres, because they come from different instruments, surveys and corrections for the speed of sound in water. Here is how the figures compare in the data behind this site.
| Source | Depth | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| GEBCO_2026 grid, full resolution | 10,927 m | Deepest cell within 15 km. The figure used on this site. |
| Map tile, zoom 7 | 10,875 m | What a tap on the map reads. About 52 m shallower because a tile pixel is about 1.2 km wide at the equator. |
| Map tile, zoom 5 | 10,734 m | Zoomed out, the same spot averages over a wider area and reads shallower still. |
| Commonly cited | 10,935 m | Often quoted 10,920 to 10,935 m; GEBCO 15 arc-second gives about 10,9xx m. |
| Wikidata, Challenger Deep | 10,984 m | The depth recorded in the open database. |
About deeps
A deep is the deepest part of a trench or basin: a small area, often only a few kilometres across, that gets its own name.
This site lists 24 deeps, 13 of them with their own indexed page. See all undersea features.
Nearby undersea features
- Vityas Deep 1 deep, about 38 km away
- Mariana Trench oceanic trench, about 43 km away
- Sirena Deep deep, about 230 km away
- Galvez Banks seamount or guyot, about 276 km away
- Parece Vela Basin ocean basin, about 279 km away
- Emerging Gaferut Seamount seamount or guyot, about 388 km away
Distances are between listed points. A long feature such as a trench or ridge has a single listed point on Wikidata.
The deepest deeps in our list
- Vityas Deep 1 10,931 m
- Sirena Deep 10,751 m
- Scholl Deep 10,040 m
- Horizon Deep 8,454 m
- Milwaukee Deep 8,405 m
- Meteor Deep 8,041 m
Frequently asked questions
How deep is the Challenger Deep?
In the GEBCO grid the figure is 10,927 m. That is the deepest cell in the grid within 20 km of its listed point. Wikidata, the open database this feature's name comes from, gives a depth of 10,984 m. That is within 57 m of the grid figure.
Where is the Challenger Deep?
Its listed point is 11.37° N, 142.59° E, about 287 km from Federated States of Micronesia. The grid's deepest cell for it is at 11.37° N, 142.60° E.
Is Challenger Deep the deepest point in the ocean?
It is the deepest point found in the GEBCO grid: 10,927 m at 11.37° N, 142.60° E. The single deepest cell of the grid reads 10,931 m, a few metres more, a little way off in the Mariana Trench. Both sit in the same deep, and published figures differ by tens of metres.
Data: depth from the GEBCO_2026 grid. Name and position from Wikidata Q459173 (CC0); Wikipedia article. See data sources and licences. The GEBCO Grid should NOT be used for navigation or for any other purpose involving safety at sea.
All undersea features · All oceans and seas · Drain the oceans