Six scoped regional leaderboards, not a global "top ports in the world" ranking. Each one ranks ports from a single country reporting cargo for the exact same real period, from the same source family, in the same unit — a genuine same-period, same-unit comparison. Click a port to expand every other real metric reported for it.
PortIndex doesn't currently publish a single worldwide cargo-throughput ranking, and that's deliberate: reporting periods are staggered across countries and sources (Tunisia's cluster covers Jan–Jun 2026, India's covers its own fiscal window, Malaysia, Japan, and Sri Lanka each cover their own real calendar windows, Morocco's is a year-to-date window, and other tracked ports report on entirely different real calendars), and metric and unit naming conventions aren't fully normalized across the full port catalogue yet — for example vessel-call counts use the unit vessel_calls_count almost everywhere but literally count for at least one tracked port. Ranking across mismatched periods or silently-merged units would misrepresent real data as more comparable than it actually is, and some clusters mix in national/regional aggregate rows (like two Malaysian MOT state aggregates) that have to be excluded from a ranking of individual ports. The six leaderboards below are the parts of the catalogue where that comparison is honest today.
A different axis of honesty from the leaderboards below: of the 17,464 ports catalogued and 74 with any tracked statistics, only these 3 have real multi-decade time-series depth — long enough to show an actual trend, not just a single reporting period. The next-deepest series anywhere in the catalogue is Nouakchott, Mauritania, at 17 annual rows spanning 2006–2022 — a third of Maputo and Beira's run, and a fraction of Singapore's.
| Port | Metric | Records | Range | Unit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singapore | Container throughput | 378 (monthly) | Jan 1995 – Jun 2026 | thousand TEU |
| Maputo, Mozambique | Total cargo handled | 50 (annual) | 1975 – 2024 | tonnes |
| Beira, Mozambique | Total cargo handled | 50 (annual) | 1975 – 2024 | tonnes |
Singapore: 31 years of monthly data, one unit throughout. Maputo, Mozambique: 7.8M → 30.9M tonnes, ~4.0x growth end to end. Beira, Mozambique: 2.1M → 16.7M tonnes, ~7.8x growth end to end.
8 ports, all reporting cargo tonnage, TEU, and vessel calls for the identical real period from the Tunisian OMMP port-statistics source family. Ranked by total cargo handled.
| Rank | Port | Cargo (tonnes) | TEU | Vessel calls |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Radès | 3,686,793 | 176,387 | 600 |
| 2 | Sfax | 3,227,212 | 57,849 | 360 |
| 3 | Bizerte | 2,753,878 | 8,160 | 187 |
| 4 | La Skhirra | 1,434,507 | — | 48 |
| 5 | Gabès | 1,311,971 | — | 175 |
| 6 | Sousse | 1,103,388 | 35,333 | 300 |
| 7 | Zarzis | 706,774 | 2,737 | 113 |
| 8 | La Goulette Nord (Halqueloued) | 570,940 | 225 | 427 |
12 ports, all reporting cargo tonnage for the identical real fiscal period from the India Ports Association (IPA) source family. Ranked by total cargo handled.
| Rank | Port | Cargo (tonnes) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kandla | 74,937,000 |
| 2 | Paradip Port | 64,455,000 |
| 3 | Jawaharlal Nehru (Nhava Sheva) | 46,361,000 |
| 4 | Visakhapatnam | 39,015,000 |
| 5 | Mumbai (ex Bombay) | 30,361,000 |
| 6 | Kolkata (ex Calcutta) | 28,891,000 |
| 7 | Chennai (ex Madras) | 23,231,000 |
| 8 | Ennore | 21,406,000 |
| 9 | New Mangalore | 19,657,000 |
| 10 | Tuticorin | 18,265,000 |
| 11 | Kochi | 15,634,000 |
| 12 | Marmagao (Marmugao) | 8,144,000 |
10 ports, all reporting total, export, and import cargo tonnage for the identical real period from the Malaysia Ministry of Transport (MOT) source family. Two MOT state-level aggregate rows (Johor and Sabah) are excluded — they roll up multiple facilities and aren't individual ports. Ranked by total cargo handled.
| Rank | Port | Cargo total (tonnes) | Export (tonnes) | Import (tonnes) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Port Klang (Pelabuhan Klang) | 248,706,000 | 52,480,000 | 74,204,000 |
| 2 | Tanjung Pelepas | 153,992,000 | 4,125,000 | 2,174,000 |
| 3 | Bintulu, Sarawak | 45,113,000 | 39,007,000 | 5,273,000 |
| 4 | Penang (Georgetown) | 30,724,000 | 11,952,000 | 18,443,000 |
| 5 | Kuantan (Tanjong Gelang) | 21,339,000 | 9,544,000 | 11,719,000 |
| 6 | Port Dickson | 15,130,000 | 1,171,000 | 13,958,000 |
| 7 | Kuching, Sarawak | 10,434,000 | 1,551,000 | 8,679,000 |
| 8 | Kemaman | 7,802,000 | 3,326,000 | 4,476,000 |
| 9 | Miri, Sarawak | 6,643,000 | 2,811,000 | 511,000 |
| 10 | Rejang, Sarawak | 1,496,000 | 232,000 | 1,264,000 |
5 ports, all reporting cargo tonnage for the identical real calendar year from the MLIT (Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism) Port Survey source family. Ranked by total cargo handled.
| Rank | Port | Cargo (tonnes) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nagoya, Aichi | 156,706,387 |
| 2 | Yokohama | 101,225,498 |
| 3 | Kobe | 92,978,639 |
| 4 | Osaka | 85,599,343 |
| 5 | Tokyo | 82,906,166 |
4 ports, all reporting cargo tonnage for the identical real calendar year from the Sri Lanka Ports Authority annual-report source family. Ranked by total cargo handled.
| Rank | Port | Cargo (tonnes) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Colombo | 43,858,000 |
| 2 | Hambantota | 3,032,150 |
| 3 | Trincomalee | 2,613,000 |
| 4 | Galle | 400 |
3 ports, all reporting year-to-date cargo tonnage for the identical real reporting window from the morocco_*_port_activity source family. Ranked by total cargo handled.
| Rank | Port | Cargo (tonnes) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tanger Med | 118,500,000 |
| 2 | Jorf Lasfar | 30,600,000 |
| 3 | Casablanca | 24,400,000 |
Which ports report a given metric — presence only, never a value comparison. This is deliberately not a ranking: many of these metric names come from different port authorities' own conventions and aren't necessarily measuring the same thing the same way, so no value is shown here at all, only which real ports have reported it at least once. Limited to metrics with 3 or more reporting ports.