Abstract SWOT river discharge products rely on the SWOT River Database (SWORD), designed mainly for single‐thread channels. We assess how well SWORD represents ∼65,000 river bifurcations from the Global River Topology (GRIT) network. SWORD geographically intersects both downstream branches at 88.2% of bifurcations, but only 2.0% of these have distinct reach IDs per branch. At structurally usable bifurcations, summed branch discharge exceeds the upstream value by a median factor of 2.1 in every algorithm tested, and the closure error is independent of branch width asymmetry. A width‐based redistribution (Q ∝ W1.52) enforces closure by construction; at the Athabasca–Embarras bifurcation, when anchored to the upstream gauge discharge and using Landsat‐derived branch widths, the redistribution matches the gauged Embarras flow fraction (QEM/Qupstream) within 0.004 whereas SoS V3 underestimates it by 0.089. Improved multi‐channel topology in SWORD‐like frameworks remains the longer‐term path to branch‐resolved discharge.