The Yangtze River Basin, covering about 1.8×10⁶ km², is the natural habitat of the Chinese sturgeon (Acipenser sinensis), Chinese paddlefish (Psephurus gladius) and Yangtze sturgeon (Acipenser dabryanus). In recent years, the scale of exotic sturgeon and paddlefish aquaculture in the Yangtze River Basin has been enormous, and escape from aquaculture has become the main way for these exotic sturgeons to enter the Yangtze River Basin, affecting the survival of local sturgeon and paddlefish populations. According to FishBase, of the ten farmed exotic sturgeon and paddlefish species, Acipenser baerii was considered as an invasive species in Germany and Austria, while the paddlefish (Polyodon spathula) was considered as an aquatic invader in Belarus. The Aquatic Species Invasiveness Screening Kit (AS-ISK) was used to assess the invasion risk of exotic sturgeon and paddlefish, and five related fish species (Oncorhynchus mykiss, Ictalurus punctatus, Oreochromis niloticus, Cirrhinus molitorella and Tinca tinca). The suitability regions for exotic sturgeon and paddlefish with the highest risk of invasion were quantified using the maximum entropy algorithm, considering present and future climate variables and altitude. The results showed that paddlefish was classified as having the highest score among ten farmed exotic sturgeon and paddlefish species, indicating the highest invasiveness of the paddlefish in the Yangtze River basin. The results of the maximum entropy algorithm indicated that the distribution of paddlefish in the Yangtze River Basin was mainly influenced by the precipitation of the warmest quarter, the annual precipitation, the maximum temperature of the warmest month, the minimum temperature of the coldest month, the mean diurnal range (maximum monthly temperature minus minimum monthly temperature) and the seasonality of precipitation (coefficient of variation). In the current period, the paddlefish had a wide range of suitability regions in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River Basin, mainly including parts of Hunan, Hubei, Anhui and Jiangxi provinces. And its area of the third-tier region (high suitability region) was about 2996.8 km². Under the 4 scenarios of the global climate model, the number would increase by 1.41 to 1.78 times in the future period, while the centroid of the total suitability region would shift to the northeast by 137.97 km to 163.20 km. This study shows that care should be taken to ensure that the escape of farmed paddlefish does not threaten the survival of native sturgeon in these regions.