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This paper proposes a detailed comparison of local and regional approaches for flood frequency analyses, with a special emphasis on the effects of (a) the information on extreme floods used in the analysis (historical data or recent extreme floods observed at ungauged sites), and (b) the assumptions associated with regional approaches (statistical homogeneity of considered series, independence of observations). The results presented are based on two case studies: the Ard e ̀ che and Argens rivers regions in south-east of France. Four approaches are compared: 1–local analysis based on continuous measured series, 2–local analysis with historical information, 3–regional index-flood analysis based on continuous series, 4–regional analysis involving information on extremes (including both historical floods and recent floods observed at ungauged sites). The inference approach used is based on a GEV …