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The components of the Amazon water budget and their spatiotemporal variability are diagnosed using monthly averaged remote sensing‐based data products for the period September 2002‐December 2006. The large Amazon basin is divided into 14 smaller watersheds, and for each of these sub‐basins, fresh water discharge is estimated from the water balance equation using satellite data products. The purpose of this study is to learn how to apply satellite data with global coverage over the large tropical regions; therefore several combinations of remote sensing estimates including total water storage changes, precipitation and evapotranspiration. The results are compared to gauge‐based measurements and the best spatiotemporal agreement between estimated and observed runoff is within 1 mm/d for the combination of precipitation from the GPCP and the Montana evapotranspiration product. Mean annual …