How Much Cargo Goes Through the Suez Canal? 464M Tons (2025)

The Suez Canal carried 464 million tons of cargo in 2025

The Suez Canal Authority (SCA) counts 12,758 ship transits and 464.4 million tons of cargo for calendar 2025 in its annual statistics, an average of 35 ships a day. In Suez Canal net tons, the volume measure the canal charges tolls on, the year came to 522.1 million. Transits slipped 3.4% from 2024 while cargo rose 1.4%, so 2025 was a second year at the same low level rather than a further slide.

The record year sets the scale of the gap. In 2023 the canal handled 26,434 transits, 72.4 a day, and 1.32 billion tons of cargo. The 2025 total recovered 48% of those transits but only 35% of the cargo and 33% of the net tonnage. The ships that stayed away were the biggest: the average transit measured 40,900 net tons in 2025, down from 59,300 in 2023.

How the Suez Canal Authority and IMF PortWatch count cargo

Suez figures come from 2 publishers working from their own data, and each measures something different.

The Suez Canal Authority records the transits it handles and reports 2 tonnages. Net tonnage measures a ship’s enclosed cargo space, so the same vessel scores the same whether it crosses full or empty. Cargo tons are the weight of goods aboard, which the authority splits by direction of travel. Both appear by calendar year in its annual statistics. A transit is a crossing, not a ship: a vessel on a round trip between Asia and Europe crosses once each way, so the 26,434 crossings of 2023 came from a far smaller pool of individual cargo ships.

IMF PortWatch, which the IMF built with the University of Oxford, works from the AIS position signals ships broadcast, collected by satellite and shore receivers and supplied through the UN Global Platform. It logs a transit call when a ship crosses a boundary drawn around the canal, and waits 48 hours before it will count the same ship again. Its cargo figure is an estimate: each ship’s payload, inferred from draft and dimensions, multiplied by its deadweight tonnage. It publishes a figure for every day, so it carries the 2026 picture long before the authority’s next annual report.

Measure	Publisher	2023	2024	2025	Jan to Sep 2026
Transits	SCA	26,434	13,213	12,758	Not published yet
Transit calls	PortWatch	26,895	14,498	14,070	11,109
Cargo, million tons	SCA	1,322.7	457.8	464.4	Not published yet
Net tons, million	SCA	1,568.3	524.5	522.1	Not published yet
Estimated cargo, million metric tons	PortWatch	1,223.3	489.8	505.8	403.4

Suez Canal traffic by year, 1975 to 2025

The authority’s series opens in 1975, a year with 210 days of transits. Selected years show how far ship sizes have grown:

Year	Transits	Ships a day	Net tons, million
1976	16,806	45.9	187.8
1980	20,795	56.8	281.3
1990	17,664	48.4	410.3
2000	14,142	38.6	439.0
2008	21,415	58.5	910.1
2009	17,228	47.2	734.5
2015	17,483	47.9	998.7
2019	18,880	51.7	1,207.1
2021	20,694	56.7	1,274.8
2022	23,851	65.3	1,409.9
2023	26,434	72.4	1,568.3
2024	13,213	36.1	524.5
2025	12,758	35.0	522.1

The count of transits and the tonnage have parted ways over 5 decades. The year 1980 had more transits than 2019, 20,795 against 18,880, and less than a quarter of the net tonnage. Before the Red Sea crisis, the worst recent year was 2009, when net tonnage fell 19.3% in the financial crisis and was back above its 2008 level within 2 years.

The 2023 record capped a 3-year climb: transits rose 10.8% on 2022 and net tonnage 11.2%. Then 2024 and 2025 brought the fewest transits of any full year in the authority’s series, below the 13,447 of 2002. They still carried more net tonnage than any year before 2003, because the ships that kept using the canal are far larger than the ships of the 1990s.

Suez Canal net tonnage by year

• 1980281.3 million
• 1990410.3 million
• 2000439 million
• 2009734.5 million
• 2015998.7 million
• 20191,207.1 million
• 20221,409.9 million
• 20231,568.3 million
• 2024524.5 million
• 2025522.1 million

Source: Suez Canal Authority, Suez Canal Statistics for 2025 Compared to 2024, Table 1

Suez Canal cargo by ship type

The authority splits transits and net tonnage across 9 ship types. Comparing the record year with 2025 shows which ships left:

Ship type	Transits 2023	Transits 2025	Change	Net tons 2023, million	Net tons 2025, million	Change
Tankers	8,435	4,991	-40.8%	416.4	246.9	-40.7%
Bulk carriers	7,186	3,423	-52.4%	295.1	131.9	-55.3%
Container ships	5,847	1,840	-68.5%	657.0	72.5	-89.0%
General cargo	2,056	1,333	-35.2%	22.5	17.8	-20.8%
Car carriers	1,077	179	-83.4%	66.4	11.5	-82.7%
LNG carriers	819	282	-65.6%	91.8	30.6	-66.7%
Ro-ro	207	176	-15.0%	7.4	5.9	-19.7%
Passenger and other	807	534	-33.8%	11.7	5.0	-57.0%
All ships	26,434	12,758	-51.7%	1,568.3	522.1	-66.7%

Container ships were the canal’s heaviest users before the diversions: 22.1% of transits in 2023 but 41.9% of net tonnage, more than tankers and bulk carriers. By 2025 they made up 14.4% of transits and 13.9% of net tonnage, and tankers led on both counts at 39.1% and 47.3%.

The container ships still crossing are much smaller ones. The average container transit measured 112,400 net tons in 2023 and 39,400 in 2025, a drop of 65%, which tells you the largest vessels kept sailing around Africa. Car carriers fell almost as far as container ships, while tankers held 59% of their 2023 tonnage.

Against 2024, the 2025 mix moved in small steps. Container transits rose 5.3% while their net tonnage slipped 3.1%. LNG carrier tonnage jumped 132.4% and car carrier tonnage 74.4%, both from very low 2024 bases, and bulk carriers lost another 18.2%.

Suez Canal net tonnage in 2025 as a share of 2023, by ship type

• Container ships11%
• Car carriers17.3%
• LNG carriers33.3%
• Bulk carriers44.7%
• Tankers59.3%
• General cargo79.2%
• Ro-ro80.3%

Source: Suez Canal Authority 2024 and 2025 statistics, Table 3; share is our arithmetic

Suez Canal cargo by direction

The authority reports cargo tons in 2 directions. North to south runs from the Mediterranean into the Red Sea and on to the Gulf and Asia. South to north runs the other way, carrying goods from Asia, India and the Gulf toward Europe and the Atlantic.

Direction, million tons	2023	2024	2025	2025 against 2023
North to south	750.4	335.8	317.6	-57.7%
South to north	572.3	122.0	146.9	-74.3%
Total	1,322.7	457.8	464.4	-64.9%

The northbound lane fell harder. It carried 43.3% of the canal’s cargo in 2023 and 31.6% in 2025. Its 20.4% gain in 2025, about 24.9 million tons, is what lifted the year’s total, since southbound cargo lost 18.2 million tons. For a US importer the northbound lane is the one that counts: goods from Asia and the Middle East heading for the East Coast through Suez travel south to north.

Suez Canal share of world trade, oil and LNG

In a normal year about 15% of global maritime trade volume passes through Suez, the shortest sea route between Asia and Europe, according to the IMF’s March 2024 analysis of PortWatch data. Energy makes up a large slice of it. The US Energy Information Administration put oil moving through the canal and the SUMED pipeline, which carries crude north across Egypt and can move 2.5 million barrels a day, at about 12% of seaborne-traded oil in the first half of 2023.

Flow	Share through Suez	Period	Source
Global maritime trade volume	About 15%	A normal year	IMF, 2024
Seaborne-traded oil, canal and SUMED	About 12%	First half of 2023	EIA, 2023
World LNG trade	About 8%	First half of 2023	EIA, 2023
Southbound Suez oil that was Russian	74%, up from 30% in 2021	First half of 2023	EIA, 2023

The southbound oil trade explains part of the direction split. EIA found that most southbound oil through Suez went to India and China, which were importing mostly Russian crude. LNG through the canal had already eased before the attacks, from a combined peak of 4.5 billion cubic feet a day in 2021 and 2022 to 4.1 billion in the first half of 2023, by EIA’s count.

Suez Canal traffic in 2026

PortWatch’s daily data run to October 4, 2026. From January to September it logged 11,109 Suez transit calls, about 41 a day, and an estimated 403.4 million metric tons of cargo. That is 8.3% more calls and 11.2% more cargo than the same months of 2025, and 55.5% of the calls and 44.1% of the cargo of the same months of 2023.

January to September	2023	2024	2025	2026
Suez transit calls	20,021	11,146	10,259	11,109
Suez cargo, million metric tons	915.7	382.4	362.9	403.4
Suez container ship calls	5,311	2,376	2,481	2,445
Suez container cargo, million metric tons	284.8	55.1	52.7	71.6
Cape of Good Hope transit calls	13,294	24,066	24,495	24,780
Cape container cargo, million metric tons	55.8	314.3	342.2	329.7

Container ships are where 2026 changed. Their call count barely moved, 1.5% below 2025, yet the cargo they carried through the canal rose 36.0%, which means bigger ships were coming back. In July to September 2026, container ships took an estimated 32.3 million tons through Suez, 84.6% more than a year earlier and 31.3% of the same quarter in 2023. September brought 323 container ship calls and 13.4 million tons, both the highest monthly figures since December 2023.

Container ship cargo through the Suez Canal, July to September

• 2023103.1 million t
• 202416.5 million t
• 202517.5 million t
• 202632.3 million t

Source: IMF PortWatch, Daily Chokepoints Data, Suez Canal; quarterly sums are our arithmetic

The wider region moved the other way. PortWatch logged 5,398 transit calls through the Strait of Hormuz from January to September 2026, 78.1% fewer than in the same months of 2025, over the same stretch in which Suez calls rose. Suez also still outweighs the Panama Canal, with 403.4 million tons of estimated cargo in the first 9 months of 2026 against Panama’s 251.7 million, though its lead has narrowed from 3.8 to 1 in the same months of 2023 to 1.6 to 1.

Suez Canal vs the Cape of Good Hope route

Most of the traffic that left Suez is sailing around southern Africa. PortWatch counted 24,780 transit calls past the Cape of Good Hope from January to September 2026, 86.4% more than in the same months of 2023. Container ships made 5,369 of them, 3.4 times the 2023 count, and the container cargo rounding the Cape, about 329.7 million tons, was 4.6 times what container ships took through Suez in the same months.

The detour costs time. The IMF estimated that diversions around the Cape added 10 days or more to average delivery times, and that traffic around the Cape rose about 74% above the previous year in January and February 2024, while Suez trade volume fell 50%. Bab el-Mandeb, the strait at the southern end of the Red Sea that ships between Suez and the Indian Ocean must pass, shows the same gap: 9,179 calls from January to September 2026, 45.4% of the 2023 level, with container ships at 28.5%.

What Suez Canal traffic means for a brand importing product

The canal reaches a US brand through lead time more than through tonnage. If your goods sail from India, Pakistan, the Gulf or the eastern Mediterranean to an East Coast port, or from Asia on a service routed west through Suez, the IMF’s 10 extra days on the Cape route land in your reorder math. Ask your forwarder at booking which way the service runs, and plan from the routing on the booking confirmation rather than from a transit time you were quoted before 2024.

Those days carry a price. Every extra day on the water is a day of stock you have paid for and cannot sell. A brand that sells 400 units a day needs about 4,000 more units in transit to hold the same in-stock date across a 10-day detour; at a $12 landed cost that is $48,000 of working capital tied up for as long as the routing lasts. The same uncertainty belongs in safety stock: if transit can swing by a week or more depending on routing, the reorder point has to cover that swing.

The switch back to Suez brings its own problem. When a carrier moves a service back through the canal, containers arrive days earlier than the dates on the purchase order, and a warehouse that booked dock labor for the old date can be short-handed the week they land. PortWatch shows larger container ships returning in the third quarter of 2026, so send updated advance ship notices to your 3PL as soon as a vessel’s arrival date moves. A brand bringing those containers into the East Coast and comparing 3PLs in Savannah can ask each one how many receiving appointments it holds open for early or late boxes, what a missed slot costs, and how fast received stock goes live for orders.