List of highest mountains on Earth

There are at least 108 mountains on Earth with elevations of 7,200 m (23,622.0 ft; 4.5 mi) or greater above sea level. Of these, 14 are more than 8,000 m (26,246.7 ft; 5.0 mi). The vast majority of these mountains are part of either the Himalayas or the Karakoram mountain ranges located on the edge of the Indian plate and Eurasian plate in China, India, Nepal, and Pakistan.

Discussion

The dividing line between a mountain with multiple peaks and separate mountains is not always clear (see also Highest unclimbed mountain). A popular and intuitive way to distinguish mountains from subsidiary peaks is by their height above the highest saddle connecting it to a higher summit, a measure called topographic prominence or re-ascent (the higher summit is called the "parent peak"). A common definition of a mountain is a summit with 300 m (984 ft) prominence. Alternatively, a relative prominence (prominence/height) is used (usually 7–8%) to reflect that in higher mountain ranges everything is on a larger scale. The table below lists the highest 100 summits with at least 500 m (1,640 ft) prominence, approximating a 7% relative prominence. A drawback of a prominence-based list is that it may exclude well-known or spectacular mountains that are connected via a high ridge to a taller summit, such as Eiger, Nuptse or Annapurna IV. A few such peaks and mountains with nearly sufficient prominence are included in this list, and given a rank of "S".

It is very unlikely that all given heights are correct to the nearest metre; indeed, the sea level is often problematic to define when a mountain is remote from the sea.