An existing procedure developed to measure flow rates through geosynthetic clay liners (GCLs), is adapted to characterize the flow rate through several multicomponent GCLs. Three GCLs and five different multicomponent GCLs were tested from several manufacturers; two multicomponent GCLs are coated with a mass per unit area of coating less than 100 g/m² and larger than 200 g/m² respectively; and three multicomponent GCLs are laminated with a film which presents different thicknesses and different bonding modes. The developed procedure combines the testing cell from NF P 84-705 (Determination of the swelling, flow and permeability characteristics of geosynthetic clay liners using an oedopermeameter) and the measuring devices from EN 14150 for flow rate measurement through geomembranes. Results show that flow rates in multicomponent GCLs are one order of magnitude larger than the ones usually measured for virgin geomembranes, i.e. 10-5 m3/m2/d, except for two of the multicomponent GCLs for which the light coating and the perforations by needling have resulted in larger flow rates in the range 1.4 × 10-11 m/s to 2.2 × 10-11 m/s. The flow rate in multicomponent GCLs with an adhesive bounded film thicker than 0.2 mm or coating with a density larger than 200 g/m² is closer to the flow rate in ge-omembranes than to the flow rate in GCLs which tends to show that the flow rate is controlled by the coating or attached film rather than by the bentonite.