It descends very steeply northward towards Cosenza where it is joined on the left by the Busento river, doubling in size.

From here it changes course to the northeast and meets with the Coscile river approximately five kilometers from the Gulf of Taranto.

The Crati is the largest river in the region in terms of discharge, both as an annual average (about 36 m3/s), minimum (about 10 m3/s) and maximum (more than 3,000 m3/s).

The river is very seasonal and can sometimes bring disastrous winter floods, which happened most recently in December 2008.

An analysis of core samples taken from the site of Sybaris by Stanley and Bernasconi did not find such river deposits directly above the former city.

Future retrieval of additional cores and facies analysis will eventually confirm or discredit Strabo's account.