The extremes, ranked. Everything here is worked out from real population and area figures rather than copied off a listicle, so the tables move when the underlying data does.
Ranked across 247 inhabited countries. Uninhabited territories are left out — otherwise they would win every "smallest" table by default.
Russia alone is bigger than Pluto's surface.
| # | Country | Area |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Russia | 17,100,000 km² |
| 2 | Canada | 9,984,670 km² |
| 3 | United States | 9,629,091 km² |
| 4 | China | 9,596,960 km² |
| 5 | Brazil | 8,511,965 km² |
| 6 | Australia | 7,686,850 km² |
| 7 | India | 3,287,590 km² |
| 8 | Argentina | 2,766,890 km² |
| 9 | Kazakhstan | 2,717,300 km² |
| 10 | Algeria | 2,381,740 km² |
The whole top five put together would fit inside one mid-sized city.
| # | Country | Area |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Monaco | 1 km² |
| 2 | Gibraltar | 6 km² |
| 3 | Tokelau | 10 km² |
| 4 | Cocos Islands | 14 km² |
| 5 | Nauru | 21 km² |
| 6 | Saint Barthelemy | 21 km² |
| 7 | Sint Maarten | 21 km² |
| 8 | Tuvalu | 26 km² |
| 9 | Norfolk Island | 34 km² |
| 10 | Pitcairn | 47 km² |
The top two are roughly a third of everyone alive.
| # | Country | Population |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 1,411,778,724 |
| 2 | India | 1,352,617,328 |
| 3 | United States | 327,167,434 |
| 4 | Indonesia | 267,663,435 |
| 5 | Pakistan | 212,215,030 |
| 6 | Brazil | 209,469,333 |
| 7 | Nigeria | 195,874,740 |
| 8 | Bangladesh | 161,356,039 |
| 9 | Russia | 144,478,050 |
| 10 | Japan | 126,529,100 |
Several of these have fewer residents than a large secondary school.
| # | Country | Population |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands | 30 |
| 2 | Pitcairn | 46 |
| 3 | French Southern Territories | 140 |
| 4 | Cocos Islands | 628 |
| 5 | Tokelau | 1,466 |
| 6 | Christmas Island | 1,500 |
| 7 | Norfolk Island | 1,828 |
| 8 | Niue | 2,166 |
| 9 | Svalbard and Jan Mayen | 2,550 |
| 10 | Falkland Islands | 2,638 |
City-states dominate, because the whole country is the city.
| # | Country | Density |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Monaco | 38,682 /km² |
| 2 | Singapore | 8,148 /km² |
| 3 | Hong Kong | 6,773 /km² |
| 4 | Gibraltar | 5,620 /km² |
| 5 | Macao | 2,487 /km² |
| 6 | Bahrain | 2,360 /km² |
| 7 | Sint Maarten | 1,936 /km² |
| 8 | Maldives | 1,719 /km² |
| 9 | Malta | 1,530 /km² |
| 10 | Bermuda | 1,207 /km² |
Mostly ice, desert or steppe — land that people can't easily live on.
| # | Country | Density |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands | 0.01 /km² |
| 2 | French Southern Territories | 0.02 /km² |
| 3 | Greenland | 0.03 /km² |
| 4 | Svalbard and Jan Mayen | 0.04 /km² |
| 5 | Falkland Islands | 0.22 /km² |
| 6 | Pitcairn | 0.98 /km² |
| 7 | Western Sahara | 1.03 /km² |
| 8 | Mongolia | 2.03 /km² |
| 9 | French Guiana | 2.15 /km² |
| 10 | Namibia | 2.97 /km² |
Sharing a border with a dozen countries is a foreign policy in itself.
| # | Country | Neighbours |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 14 |
| 2 | Russia | 14 |
| 3 | Brazil | 10 |
| 4 | Democratic Republic of the Congo | 9 |
| 5 | Germany | 9 |
| 6 | Serbia | 9 |
| 7 | Austria | 8 |
| 8 | France | 8 |
| 9 | Tanzania | 8 |
| 10 | Turkey | 8 |
83 countries share a border with nobody — island nations, mostly, plus a couple that only reach the world by sea.