Your liver sits on the right side of your body, tucked up under your rib cage in the upper right portion of your abdomen. It occupies most of the right upper quadrant and extends across the midline into the upper middle area of your belly, sometimes reaching slightly into the left side. It’s the largest solid organ in your body, weighing roughly 1.4 to 1.5 kg (about 3.3 pounds) in men and 1.2 to 1.4 kg in women.
Exact Position in Your Abdomen
The liver sits directly beneath the diaphragm, the dome-shaped muscle that helps you breathe. Its upper edge reaches as high as the level of your nipples, and its lower edge typically follows the bottom rim of your rib cage on the right side. Most of the organ is shielded by ribs 7 through 11, which means you can’t normally feel it by pressing on your abdomen. During a deep breath, though, the diaphragm pushes the liver downward just enough that a doctor can sometimes feel its lower edge slip past the ribs.
The liver’s underside rests on top of your right kidney, the first section of your small intestine, part of your colon, and your stomach. The gallbladder, a small pouch that stores bile, sits nestled into a shallow groove on the liver’s underside. If you imagine the organ from the front, it’s shaped like a wedge or a thick triangle, wider on the right and tapering as it crosses toward the left.
In adults, the liver spans about 15 centimeters (roughly 6 inches) from top to bottom when measured along the midclavicular line, which is an imaginary vertical line running through the middle of the collarbone. A normal span during a physical exam falls between 6 and 12 cm, though larger measurements aren’t automatically a sign of disease.
What Your Liver Actually Does
The liver performs over 500 functions, but most of them fall into a few major categories: filtering blood, processing nutrients, making essential proteins, and producing bile.
Every day, your liver filters more than 250 gallons of blood. It breaks down toxins, medications, and waste products so they can leave your body safely through urine or stool. It converts poisonous ammonia (a byproduct of protein digestion) into a harmless substance that your kidneys can excrete. It also clears bilirubin, a yellow pigment released when old red blood cells break down. When the liver can’t process bilirubin properly, it builds up and turns your skin and eyes yellow, a condition known as jaundice.
On the nutrient side, your liver converts excess blood sugar into a storage form called glycogen and releases it back into your bloodstream when your levels dip. It regulates amino acids (the building blocks of protein), processes fats for energy, stores iron from broken-down red blood cells, and manufactures cholesterol your body uses to build cell membranes and hormones. It also produces clotting factors that help control bleeding and albumin, a protein that keeps fluid balanced in your bloodstream.
Bile, a greenish-yellow fluid the liver continuously produces, flows into the gallbladder for storage and is released into the small intestine after meals to help break down dietary fat.
Where Liver Pain Shows Up
Because the liver itself has very few pain-sensing nerves inside it, discomfort usually comes from swelling that stretches the organ’s outer capsule. That stretch can produce a dull ache or a sense of fullness in the upper right side of your abdomen, sometimes worsening with movement or pressure.
Liver-related pain doesn’t always stay in one spot. Depending on the cause, you may also feel it in the center of your belly, your back, your neck, or your right shoulder. Right shoulder pain in particular is a classic pattern of “referred pain” from the liver, where irritation of the diaphragm near the liver sends signals along the same nerve pathway that serves the shoulder. Sudden, severe upper right belly pain that radiates to the shoulder can indicate a bleeding liver cyst or an acute infection, both of which need prompt medical attention.
Common conditions that cause pain in the liver area include hepatitis (inflammation of the liver), fatty liver disease (now formally called metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease, or MASLD), and liver cysts or abscesses. Many people with early-stage fatty liver disease feel no pain at all, which is one reason the condition often goes undetected until routine blood work flags abnormal liver enzymes.
Can the Liver Be on the Left Side?
In rare cases, yes. A condition called situs inversus totalis causes all the major organs in the chest and abdomen to be mirrored. The liver and gallbladder end up on the left, and the heart points to the right. This affects about 1 in every 10,000 people. Most individuals with situs inversus live completely normal lives and may not even know their organs are reversed until an imaging scan reveals it. The main practical concern is making sure healthcare providers are aware of the reversal so they interpret symptoms, scans, and surgical anatomy correctly.
How Doctors Check Your Liver
During a physical exam, a doctor typically asks you to lie flat on your back and take a deep breath while they press gently on the right side of your abdomen, just below the rib cage. As you inhale, the diaphragm pushes the liver down, and the examiner tries to feel the liver’s edge slide under their fingertips. They’re checking for size, texture, and tenderness. A smooth, soft edge is normal. A firm, irregular, or enlarged edge may prompt follow-up with blood tests or an ultrasound.
Imaging with ultrasound is the most common next step because it’s painless, inexpensive, and gives a clear picture of liver size, fat content, and any masses or cysts. More detailed imaging with CT or MRI may follow if the ultrasound raises questions.