The True Size of Countries

A map made for sailors in 1569

Gerardus Mercator, a Flemish mapmaker, published his world map in 1569 for navigators. On it, a line of constant compass bearing is a straight line. A sailor could draw a course from port to port with a ruler, read the angle, and hold that bearing all the way.

To keep every angle true, Mercator had to stretch the map. On a globe, lines of longitude meet at the poles; on his map they run straight up and down, so the world is stretched east to west, more and more toward the poles. He stretched it north to south by the same amount, which keeps shapes and angles correct. At 60° latitude both stretches are 2 times, so areas look 4 times too big.

How much Mercator enlarges each latitude

The stretch depends only on latitude. Lengths are enlarged by 1 / cos(latitude) and areas by its square. Near the equator the effect is small; past 60° it climbs fast, and at the poles it becomes infinite.

That’s why web maps stop at about 85° north and south, the latitude where the world becomes a perfect square. It’s also why Antarctica, the fifth-largest continent at about 14.2 million km² (1.8 times the size of Australia), shows up on Mercator maps as a stretched white band along the bottom, if it shows up at all.

Why Google Maps uses Web Mercator

Google Maps adopted Web Mercator (EPSG:3857), a variant of Mercator, in 2005, and most web maps followed. Because it keeps angles, streets cross at the right angles and buildings keep their shapes at every zoom level, which matters far more when you’re finding a café than when you’re comparing continents. Its square world also splits neatly into the square tiles that web maps load as you pan and zoom.

Size is the price, and in 2018 Google Maps on desktop began showing a 3D globe when you zoom far out. The map on this page uses Web Mercator on purpose: it’s the map you already know, so you can watch exactly how it bends the world.

Greenland vs Africa: how big is Greenland, really?

Greenland covers about 2.17 million km². Africa covers about 30.37 million km², so Africa is 14 times bigger. On a Mercator map they look about the same, because Greenland, between about 60° and 84° north, is drawn about 16 times too big, while Africa, which straddles the equator, is drawn only about 12% too big. Mercator even makes Greenland look bigger than South America, though it’s smaller than the Arabian Peninsula.

Move Greenland to the equator and it ends up smaller than DR Congo (2.34 million km²), Africa’s second-largest country. India is 1.5 times the size of Greenland, and Greenland is only a little bigger than Mexico (1.1 times) and Indonesia (1.14 times).

Open Greenland vs DR Congo on the map

Africa vs the US, China and India

Africa is about 3.1 times the size of the whole United States, Alaska included, and 3.8 times the lower 48 states. The United States, China and India together cover about 22.7 million km², which leaves about 7.6 million km² of Africa to spare: almost exactly the size of Australia (7.74 million km²).

Drop the lower 48, China and India onto Africa

Russia vs Africa

Russia is the largest country in the world at 17.1 million km², about 1.7 times the size of the United States or Canada. Africa is still almost 1.8 times bigger. On a Mercator map the order flips: most of Russia lies north of 50°, so it’s drawn about 5 times too big and looks about 2.5 times the size of Africa.

See Russia laid over Africa

Canada vs the US vs China: total area or land area?

By total area, the largest countries are Russia, Canada, the United States and China, in that order. Canada (9,984,670 km²) beats the United States (9,833,517 km²) by 1.5%, and the United States beats China (9,596,960 km²) by 2.5%.

Count only land and the order changes. Canada has so many lakes and rivers that the United States has more land: 9,147,593 km² against Canada’s 9,093,507 km². China has more land than either, at 9,326,410 km². So “Is Canada bigger than the US?” has two right answers, depending on whether you count water.

On a Mercator map it doesn’t look close at all. Canada is drawn about 5 times too big and the United States, Alaska included, about 2.3 times, so Canada looks more than twice the size of the US. Next to Brazil, which is only about 15% smaller, Canada looks almost 6 times bigger.

Compare Canada and Brazil at the same latitude

The US with and without Alaska

The 50 states and DC cover 9,833,517 km². Without Alaska and Hawaii, the lower 48 states and DC cover about 8.08 million km². Alaska alone is 1,723,337 km²: about 2.5 times the size of Texas (695,662 km²) and a little more than a fifth of the lower 48.

Mercator makes Alaska look far bigger than that. It’s drawn about 5 times too big, so on the map it looks more than half the size of the lower 48. In the tool, add the “United States” (with Alaska and Hawaii) and the “Contiguous United States” (the lower 48) to see both.

Brazil and Australia vs the lower 48

Brazil (8,515,770 km²) is about 5% bigger than the lower 48 states. Australia (7,741,220 km²) is about 4% smaller, close enough that the two look like twins when you lay one over the other. On a Mercator map, the lower 48 look about 40% bigger than Australia instead.

Lay Australia over the lower 48

The UK vs Madagascar

Madagascar (587,041 km²) is 2.4 times the size of the United Kingdom (243,610 km²). On a Mercator map they look about the same: the UK, between about 50° and 61° north, is drawn almost 3 times too big, and Madagascar, between about 12° and 26° south, only about 13% too big.

Put the UK next to Madagascar

How wide is Indonesia?

Indonesia has less land than Greenland, but it’s long. Its islands stretch about 5,100 km from east to west, more than the 4,130 km between San Francisco and New York. Mercator draws it at almost exactly its true size because it sits on the equator, while the countries you’d usually compare it with are inflated, so it looks smaller than it is.

Stretch Indonesia across the US

Total area vs land area

Total area counts land plus inland water, such as lakes, rivers and reservoirs, and for some countries coastal water too. Land area leaves the water out. The difference decides close races: Canada’s 9,984,670 km² include 891,163 km² of water, which is why it beats the United States on total area but not on land.

Why the map’s numbers differ a little

The measured areas in the Mercator table above come from the outlines on the map: the land inside each country’s coastline and borders, measured on the globe. Official totals also include inland and coastal water, and the outlines leave out the smallest islands, so the two can differ by a few percent. The United States outline measures 9,465,941 km², for example, against an official total of 9,833,517 km². Where a border is disputed, an outline follows one line, which may not match every country’s claim.

Gall–Peters, Equal Earth and AuthaGraph

• Gall–Peters keeps Mercator’s rectangle but squeezes the high latitudes, so areas are right while the tropics stretch into tall, thin shapes. James Gall described it in 1855, and Arno Peters made it famous in the 1970s.
• Equal Earth, published in 2018 by Bojan Šavrič, Tom Patterson and Bernhard Jenny, keeps areas true with gently curved sides, so continents keep shapes close to the ones you know.
• AuthaGraph, created by Japanese architect Hajime Narukawa in 1999, folds the globe into a rectangle that keeps areas nearly in proportion.

Only a globe gets size, shape, distance and direction right all at once.

Correct The Map and Equal Earth

In August 2025, the African Union endorsed Correct The Map, a campaign led by the advocacy groups Africa No Filter and Speak Up Africa that asks governments, schools and international organizations to use the Equal Earth projection instead of Mercator. Its argument is the one this page makes visible: Mercator makes Africa look small next to Europe and North America, which it draws bigger than they are.

On September 4, 2026, the UN General Assembly adopted a non-binding resolution, introduced by Togo, that encourages wider use of equal-area projections, particularly Equal Earth, where the relative size of continents matters (164 votes in favor, 1 against and 6 abstentions).