Country Size Quiz

Country land area is the most viscerally surprising statistic in geography. Russia's seventeen million square kilometers covers more of the globe than the entire surface of Pluto. Vatican City would fit inside New York's Central Park nearly seven times. This quiz pairs random countries and asks which is geographically bigger.

Map projections lie

Greenland appears enormous on a Mercator world map but is roughly the same size as Algeria. Africa is bigger than China, India, the United States, and most of Europe combined. Saudi Arabia is bigger than France, Spain, Germany, Italy, and the UK combined. Australia is almost the size of the contiguous United States. Mongolia, often perceived as a buffer state between two giants, is nearly three times the size of France.

Did you know?

• Russia spans 11 time zones — you could fly across it for nine hours and never leave the country.
• Vatican City fits inside Central Park nearly 60 times over and is the smallest sovereign state on Earth.
• Canada is bigger than the entire European continent and contains a fifth of the world's fresh water.
• Australia and the contiguous United States are roughly the same size, but Australia's population is just 8% of the US.
• Algeria is the largest country in Africa, but more than 80% of its land is uninhabitable Sahara.
• Sudan was the largest country in Africa until South Sudan split off in 2011.
• Greenland is the world's largest island that isn't a continent, with an area three times that of Texas.
• India is roughly the same size as the European Union excluding Russia.
• Kazakhstan is the largest landlocked country in the world — bigger than all of Western Europe.
• The Democratic Republic of the Congo is sub-Saharan Africa's largest country, with 80 million people.
• Saudi Arabia is the largest country in the world without a single permanent river.
• Mongolia has the world's lowest population density for a sovereign nation — under 2 people per km².
• Brazil borders every South American country except Chile and Ecuador.
• China and Russia share more land borders than any other countries — 14 each.
• Liechtenstein is doubly landlocked — landlocked by countries that are themselves landlocked.

Where the data comes from

Every figure in this category is drawn from Total land area in km². Data is refreshed quarterly; if a number looks wrong, tell us and we will check the source.