Area rankings are less familiar than population rankings, and the results catch people out — partly because the standard web map (the Mercator projection) badly distorts the size of high-latitude countries, making Russia and Canada look even larger and everything near the equator look smaller.
The top ten by land area
- Russia — about 17.1 million km². Roughly 11% of all the land on Earth, spanning 11 time zones. Larger in area than the dwarf planet Pluto.
- Canada — about 10.0 million km². Mostly uninhabited boreal forest and Arctic; it has the world's longest coastline by a wide margin.
- China — about 9.6 million km². Third or fourth depending on how disputed border areas are counted.
- United States — about 9.5 million km². Very close to China; the ordering depends on whether coastal waters and territories are included.
- Brazil — about 8.5 million km². Larger than the contiguous United States; contains most of the Amazon rainforest.
- Australia — about 7.7 million km². The only country that is also a continent, and the driest inhabited continent.
- India — about 3.3 million km². Seventh by area, despite being first in the world by population.
- Argentina — about 2.8 million km². The largest Spanish-speaking country and the eighth-largest overall.
- Kazakhstan — about 2.7 million km². The largest landlocked country in the world by a huge margin — bigger than all of Western Europe combined.
- Algeria — about 2.4 million km². The largest country in Africa since South Sudan seceded from Sudan in 2011 (before that, Sudan was largest).
Why the order surprises people
- Canada is second, not the United States. Its vast, near-empty north makes it larger than the US even though the US has nine times the population.
- Australia is a top-six country by area but has only about 26 million people — fewer than the metro area of Tokyo.
- India is only seventh by area, yet it is first in the world by population, with over 1.4 billion people.
- Kazakhstan, which rarely makes international headlines, is the ninth-largest country on Earth and larger than the whole of Western Europe.
- Sudan used to be Africa's largest country; South Sudan's 2011 independence made Algeria the largest.
The bottom of the list
At the other end, Vatican City (0.49 km²) is the smallest, followed by Monaco, Nauru, Tuvalu and San Marino — see the smallest countries in the world. The gap between first and last is a factor of about 35 million: Russia is roughly 35 million times the size of Vatican City.
Area Ranking shuffles four countries and asks you to sort them by size. It exposes exactly the blind spots above — most people badly misjudge the sparsely populated giants.
Test your instinct →Largest by continent
- Africa — Algeria (2.38 million km²)
- Asia — Russia (most of its land is in Asia), or China if Russia is counted as European
- Europe — Russia (its European portion alone would still be the largest); otherwise Ukraine
- North America — Canada
- South America — Brazil
- Oceania — Australia