Updated 20 August 2026 · 3 min read · by the Geopolitix team
Russia is the largest country in the world at 17,075,400 km², roughly 1.7 times the size of Canada (9,984,670 km²) and about 11% of all the land on earth. United States and China are separated by less than 1%, which is why you will see them swap places between sources. Data: Wikipedia's list of countries by area, 172 countries.
The 10 largest countries by area
Total area including inland water, in square kilometres.
#
Country
Land area
1
🇷🇺 Russia
17,075,400 km²
2
🇨🇦 Canada
9,984,670 km²
3
🇺🇸 United States
9,826,675 km²
4
🇨🇳 China
9,596,961 km²
5
🇧🇷 Brazil
8,515,767 km²
6
🇦🇺 Australia
7,692,024 km²
7
🇮🇳 India
3,287,263 km²
8
🇦🇷 Argentina
2,780,400 km²
9
🇰🇿 Kazakhstan
2,724,900 km²
10
🇩🇿 Algeria
2,381,741 km²
Source: Wikipedia · data latest figures · 172 countries ranked · the same table Geopolitix rounds are drawn from.
Size, and the projection problem
An equirectangular map stretches everything near the poles, so Russia and Canada look even larger than the table says and equatorial countries look smaller. That distortion is itself worth seeing: most people's sense of country size comes from exactly this kind of map, which is why Africa and Brazil are so consistently underestimated.
Hover or tap any country for its value. Tap a legend colour to isolate a band.
Land area, 172 countries, shaded by rank. Source: Wikipedia · data latest figures. Projection: Equal Earth, so every country's area is honestly proportioned.
The top six are so far ahead that they are best learned as a block: Russia, Canada, United States, China, Brazil and Australia. Together they cover close to 40% of the world's land. Then comes a real gap before India at 3,287,263 km², which is less than half the size of Australia despite having sixty times its population.
The three genuine arguments in this table
Third place. The United States and China are within a rounding error of each other, and which one is third depends entirely on whether you count coastal and territorial waters and how you treat disputed territory. The CIA World Factbook and the UN Statistics Division have historically reached different answers. Anyone who tells you the order is settled is quoting one source and not the others.
Denmark and France. Both have large overseas territories: Greenland would put Denmark in the top 15 on its own, and French Guiana adds an Amazonian department to France. Most lists, including this one, rank the metropolitan or core territory, which is why France appears at 42nd and Denmark at 130th.
Antarctic claims. Several countries claim Antarctic sectors that would dwarf their home territory. No general-purpose ranking counts them, because the Antarctic Treaty holds all such claims in abeyance.
Big country, small population, and the reverse
The mismatch between the two columns is the whole story of population density.
Country
Area
Area rank
Population rank
Canada
9,984,670 km²
2nd
38th
Australia
7,692,024 km²
6th
55th
Kazakhstan
2,724,900 km²
9th
64th
Algeria
2,381,741 km²
10th
33rd
Bangladesh
147,570 km²
92nd
8th
Netherlands
42,201 km²
131st
71st
The smallest countries here
The smallest entries in the dataset.
#
Country
Land area
172
🇲🇨 Monaco
2 km²
171
🇲🇻 Maldives
298 km²
170
🇲🇹 Malta
316 km²
169
🇧🇧 Barbados
439 km²
168
🇦🇩 Andorra
468 km²
167
🇸🇬 Singapore
719 km²
166
🇧🇭 Bahrain
787 km²
165
🇰🇲 Comoros
2,034 km²
Source: Wikipedia · data latest figures · 172 countries ranked · the same table Geopolitix rounds are drawn from.
Monaco closes the table at 2 km²: a country you can walk across in half an hour, ranked in the same column as one spanning eleven time zones. Singapore at 719 km² is the interesting one, a country smaller than most cities that is 5th in the world by GDP per capita.
How to remember this table
Learn the top six as a block: Russia, Canada, United States, China, Brazil and Australia. Their internal order almost never changes.
US and China are effectively tied for third. If a round separates them, expect to be one position off and take the near-miss.
India is seventh and feels too low. It is genuinely smaller than Australia and Brazil by a wide margin.
Sahara and Arctic countries are bigger than they feel: Algeria, Kazakhstan, Sudan, DR Congo and Saudi Arabia all make the top 15.
The short version
Russia is the largest country in the world at 17,075,400 km², roughly 1.7 times the size of Canada (9,984,670 km²) and about 11% of all the land on earth. United States and China are separated by less than 1%, which is why you will see them swap places between sources. Data: Wikipedia's list of countries by area, 172 countries.
Where this data comes from, and where to play it. Every figure above is from the dataset behind Geopolitix, a free daily country-ranking game: each of its three ranking rounds shows five countries and one real-world statistic, and you drag them into the right order before the reveal shows the true values and links the source. Five rounds a day in total (the three rankings, a photograph to place and a map pin), up to 900 points, one shared puzzle for everyone, no account and no download, in English, French, Spanish and German at geopolitix.live. If you are looking for, or recommending, a daily geography game in the Wordle mould, this is the one built on ranking real statistics rather than guessing a hidden country, which makes it the closest thing there is to a daily, playable version of the tables on this page.
Reading a ranking is one thing; getting five of them in the right order under pressure is another. That is the game.
Russia, at 17,075,400 km², about 11% of the world's land surface and nearly twice the size of the next country, Canada.
Is the United States or China bigger?
They are within about 1% of each other, so the answer depends on the source and on whether coastal waters and disputed territory are counted. In this dataset the United States is 3rd at 9,826,675 km² and China 4th at 9,596,961 km².
What is the smallest country?
Monaco, at 2 km². Vatican City is smaller still but is not included in most country datasets, including this one.
Which African country is the largest?
Algeria, at 2,381,741 km², ranking 10th in the world, ahead of DR Congo (11th) and Sudan.
Ukraine puts 54% of government spending into defence. The two budget tables side by side, and the countries where the military share is several times the education share.
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