About Map vs Reality
Map vs Reality is an independent project by W. Viljoen, built to make one thing obvious: the world map most of us picture is the Mercator projection, and it badly distorts how big countries really are. Every comparison here is something you can test yourself — drag a country across the map and watch its size correct.
How we measure true size
The figures on this site aren't copied from textbooks. Country outlines come from the Natural Earth 10m admin-0 dataset, and the true area of each country is computed directly from that geometry using a geodesic (spherical-excess) area formula on the WGS84 globe — the same approach GIS tools use. At country scale this is accurate to a fraction of a percent.
Because the areas are measured from map geometry rather than national statistics, they can differ slightly from official figures: boundary datasets handle disputed borders, islands, and inland water differently, and we round to the nearest km². The comparisons and ratios hold regardless of those small differences.
Why the map distorts size
Mercator stretches the world more the further you get from the equator, and the rule is exact: area is inflated by sec²(latitude) — 1× on the equator, double by 45°, quadruple by 60°, and climbing without limit toward the poles. That single formula is why Greenland looks as big as Africa. Explore the comparisons →
About the author
W. Viljoen builds Map vs Reality and writes its comparisons.