This digital elevation model (DEM) describes the topography of the active floodplain of the freeflowing parts of River Rhine between the weir Iffezheim and the German-Dutch border near Kleve with 1 m spatial resolution in coordinate reference system "ETRS 1989 UTM Zone 32 N" and 0.01 m resolution in the German height reference system "Deutsches Haupthöhennetz 1992 (DHHN92)".The dataset was generated in four parts through aerial laser scanning (ALS) for terrestrial parts of the floodplain and echo sounding for aquatic parts of the central water course by the local waterway and navigation authorities (WSV) between 2003 and 2010. Parts not covered by any of the two data collection methods were filled through linear interpolation. A comparison between DEM and reference points confirmed a high accuracy with a mean deviation of elevations of ± 5 cm. Depending on the data source 95% of all checked points show a vertical deviation of less than 15 cm to 50 cm.Since the dataset has a large volume it was split into 40 tiles.