Arc Hydro
Free
Esri's free hydrology framework for ArcGIS Pro — terrain preprocessing and the data model behind many agency workflows.
Geospatial & Hydro-GISActiveWatershed DelineationDEM Processing
17 tools · Category
Geospatial & Hydro-GIS
Almost every hydrological analysis starts as a geospatial one: condition a DEM, delineate a watershed, extract a stream network, compute terrain derivatives. This category collects the GIS side of water engineering — QGIS plugins, standalone terrain engines like WhiteboxTools and TauDEM, Python geospatial libraries, and Google Earth Engine scripts. If you work in QGIS, the plugins indexed here will save you more time than any other page on this site.
Crayfish
Open Source
QGIS plugin for exploring mesh model results — animate TUFLOW, Telemac and HEC-RAS 2D outputs in the GIS.
Geospatial & Hydro-GISStableQGIS HydrologyFlood Mapping
GRASS GIS
Open Source
Four decades of geospatial engineering — r.watershed and the most battle-tested hydrology modules in GIS.
Geospatial & Hydro-GISActiveWatershed DelineationDEM Processing
Click anywhere on earth, get the upstream watershed in seconds — free delineation in the browser.
Geospatial & Hydro-GISActiveWatershed Delineation
Google Earth Engine
Freemium
Planetary-scale geospatial analysis in the cloud — the data catalogue and compute behind modern water remote sensing.
Geospatial & Hydro-GISActiveGoogle Earth EngineRemote Sensing
HydroSHEDS
Free
The global hydrography reference — basins, river networks, lakes and hydro-environmental attributes, free.
Geospatial & Hydro-GISActiveWatershed DelineationTerrain Analysis
NOAA VDatum
Gov-Public
Transform elevations between vertical datums — the essential fix-up for US coastal flood and drainage models.
Geospatial & Hydro-GISActiveCoastal ModellingDEM Processing
QGIS
Open SourceVerified
The free, open-source GIS that has become the default spatial platform for water engineers worldwide.
Geospatial & Hydro-GISActiveQGIS HydrologyTerrain Analysis
QSWAT+
Open Source
The QGIS interface for SWAT+ — delineate, discretise and build a watershed model without leaving the GIS.
Geospatial & Hydro-GISActiveQGIS Watershed DelineationQGIS Hydrology
RichDEM
Open Source
High-performance DEM conditioning — Priority-Flood depression filling at scale, C++ with Python bindings.
Geospatial & Hydro-GISDormantDEM ProcessingTerrain Analysis
SAGA GIS
Open Source
The geomorphometry powerhouse — hundreds of terrain and hydrology modules behind a free desktop GIS.
Geospatial & Hydro-GISActiveTerrain AnalysisDEM Processing
TauDEM
Open Source
Utah State's parallel terrain-analysis suite — D-infinity flow modelling and objective stream-network extraction.
Geospatial & Hydro-GISStableDEM ProcessingWatershed Delineation
USGS StreamStats
Gov-Public
USGS web tool for basin delineation and regression-based flow statistics at any US stream point.
Geospatial & Hydro-GISActiveWatershed DelineationFlood Frequency Analysis
WhiteboxTools
Open SourceVerified
500+ fast geospatial analysis tools with the best DEM hydrology toolkit in open source.
Geospatial & Hydro-GISActiveDEM ProcessingTerrain Analysis
delineator
Open Source
Fast global watershed delineation in Python — the MERIT-Hydro engine behind the Global Watersheds web app.
Geospatial & Hydro-GISStableWatershed DelineationPython Hydrology
geemap
Open Source
Python + Google Earth Engine without the pain — interactive mapping and analysis of petabyte-scale water data.
Geospatial & Hydro-GISActiveGoogle Earth EngineRemote Sensing
pysheds
Open Source
Watershed delineation in pure Python — DEM conditioning to catchment boundary in a dozen lines.
Geospatial & Hydro-GISStableWatershed DelineationDEM Processing