True size
The true size of countries
World maps distort area: Greenland looks as big as Africa, yet it’s 14 times smaller. Drag a country’s outline somewhere else and see its true size.
Outlines on the map
Drag an outline with your mouse or finger; with the keyboard: Tab, then the arrow keys (hold Shift to go faster). The scale shows how many times larger the outline is at that spot on the map than at the equator.
Add a country to see its outline.
How it works
A globe can’t be flattened onto a map without distortion. The Mercator projection (Google Maps, OpenStreetMap) keeps shapes true over small areas but enlarges everything far from the equator – four times at the 60th parallel, infinitely at the poles. That’s why Greenland, Canada and Russia look huge and Africa looks small.
A moved outline is rotated across the globe: every point on the border keeps its distance and direction from the centre of the country, so the true shape and area stay the same – only the way the map draws them changes. Areas are calculated from the same outlines (Natural Earth, public domain; accurate to about 3%). Territories far from the country (e.g. Alaska, French Guiana) stay where they are.
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