The length of the river proper is 119 kilometres (74mi) or 507 kilometres (315mi) from the headwaters of the Kazyr in the Eastern Sayan Mountains in the Minusinsk Hollow. The area of its basin, which includes more than a thousand lakes, is 36,900 square kilometres (14,200sqmi).
The Tuba flows into the Krasnoyarsk Reservoir so that the mouth of the Tuba is actually part of the reservoir.
The river is navigable at high water to 99 kilometres (62mi) from its mouth, but it freezes sometime from late October to early December and thaws from April to early May.
There two road bridges and a railway bridge constructed over the Tuba.