It is found in Austria, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Hungary, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, and Ukraine.

It differs from Sander lucioperca by not having large "vampire" like canine teeth, also the colour is more silvery-grey than green, with much more distinguishable dark stripes on the side.

Its second dorsal fin has nineteen to twenty-one branched soft rays and the number of scales along the lateral line is seventy to eighty-three.

[2] The Volga pikeperch is found in the northern Black Sea basin from the Danube, as far upstream as Vienna, to the Kuban River drainages.

The lineage leading to the zander is thought to have diverged from the common ancestor with the Volga pikeperch circa 13.8 million years ago.