The amount of global fluvial sediment discharge to the oceans is an important and sensitive indicator, reflecting changes in the operation of the Earth, and has a significant influence on global socio-economic and environmental problems. Global river-to-ocean sediment flux has attracted the attention of many scholars around the world. Due to the lack of reliable and complete fluvial sediment load data, it is difficult to estimate the amount and variation of global fluvial sediment discharge to the oceans. There are large differences and inconsistencies between the values estimated by previous studies. In this paper, typical results obtained from 27 recently published papers in regards to the estimations of the global fluvial sediment discharge to the oceans are reviewed. The investigation shows that there have been large differences between estimates of the amount of global fluvial sediment discharge to the oceans in the early stages of such research, but, with increasingly in-depth examination, the estimated results in recent years have tended to be reasonable, with the amount mostly ranging from 12 to 20 billion tons per year. It is concluded that the amount of fluvial sediment discharge to the oceans before and after human activities can be considered 19 billion tons per year and 13 billion tons per year, respectively.