Continental glaciers can grow to enormous sizes, covering entire continents. The largest continental glacier on Earth is the Antarctic ice sheet, which covers an area of approximately 14 million square kilometers (5.4 million square miles). It contains an estimated 30 million cubic kilometers (7.2 million cubic miles) of ice and holds around 70% of the world's fresh water.

The second largest continental glacier is the Greenland ice sheet, covering approximately 1.7 million square kilometers (660,000 square miles) and containing about 2.8 million cubic kilometers (0.67 million cubic miles) of ice.