Yes, your liver is on your right side. It sits in the upper right portion of your abdomen, tucked just beneath your diaphragm and protected by your lower rib cage. Most of the organ is behind your right ribs, though a smaller portion extends across the midline to the left side of your body.
Exact Position of the Liver
The liver occupies what doctors call the right upper quadrant of your abdomen. It rests directly below the diaphragm (the muscle that helps you breathe) and sits on top of your stomach, right kidney, and intestines. The bulk of the organ, roughly 60% of its volume, forms the right lobe. The remaining 40% makes up a smaller left lobe that crosses over toward your left side. A band of tissue called the falciform ligament divides these two lobes.
In an average adult, the liver weighs about 1.5 kilograms (a little over 3 pounds), making it the largest solid organ in the body. When a doctor taps along your rib cage to locate the liver’s borders, the organ typically spans 6 to 12 centimeters along the right side of your chest, starting around the fifth rib and extending down to the lower edge of your rib cage.
How to Feel Your Liver
You can sometimes feel your liver’s lower edge yourself. Lie on your back, place your fingers just below your right rib cage (a few inches to the right of center), and take a deep breath in. As your diaphragm pushes down, it moves the liver slightly downward too, and you may feel a soft, smooth edge slide under your fingertips. A healthy liver edge feels soft and is only slightly tender. If the edge feels firm, rounded, or irregular, that can signal an abnormality worth getting checked out.
Pressing too hard actually makes the liver harder to feel because you push past the edge instead of letting it glide beneath your fingers.
What Liver Pain Feels Like
Because the liver sits under the right rib cage, discomfort from liver problems tends to show up as a dull ache or sense of fullness in that area. The pain is usually not sharp. It can feel more like pressure, especially if the liver is swollen and stretching the thin capsule that surrounds it.
Liver issues can also cause referred pain, meaning you feel it somewhere other than where the problem actually is. A common example is pain in the right shoulder. This happens because the nerves around the liver and diaphragm share pathways with nerves that serve the shoulder, so your brain misreads the signal’s origin. If you have unexplained right shoulder pain alongside abdominal discomfort, the liver is one possible source.
Nearby Organs on Your Right Side
The gallbladder, a small pear-shaped organ that stores bile, sits directly underneath the liver on your right side. Because of this close relationship, gallbladder pain and liver pain can feel nearly identical in location. Both produce discomfort in the upper right abdomen, though gallbladder pain often comes in sharper waves, especially after eating fatty foods.
Your right kidney also sits just behind and below the liver. Pain from kidney stones or infections can radiate to a similar region, though kidney pain typically wraps around toward the back and flank rather than concentrating under the front of the rib cage.
The Rare Exception: Liver on the Left
In about 1 in every 10,000 people, a genetic condition called situs inversus causes all the major organs in the chest and abdomen to form as a mirror image of their normal positions. In these individuals, the liver and gallbladder sit on the left side, while the spleen and stomach are on the right. Most people with situs inversus live completely normal lives and may not even know about the reversal until it shows up on an imaging scan. The condition itself doesn’t typically cause health problems, but it matters during medical emergencies because symptoms like appendicitis or liver pain appear on the opposite side from what doctors expect.
Why the Liver’s Position Matters
The liver performs hundreds of jobs that keep you alive. It filters toxins from your blood, produces bile to help digest fats, stores energy in the form of glycogen (about 120 grams at full capacity), and manufactures proteins your blood needs to clot. Its position in the upper right abdomen, directly connected to major blood vessels, allows it to receive and process large volumes of blood continuously. Roughly a quarter of your total blood supply passes through the liver at any given moment.
Knowing where your liver is helps you recognize when something in that area deserves attention. A persistent ache, a feeling of fullness under your right ribs, or visible swelling in the upper right abdomen are all signals worth investigating, especially if paired with other signs like yellowing skin, dark urine, or unusual fatigue.