Great Lakes and Guinea are almost exactly the same size

The Great Lakes (lake system) covers about 245,000 km² (94,600 mi²) and Guinea (country) about 244,000 km² (94,300 mi²). Their outlines are laid over each other below at one scale. The Great Lakes outline is Natural Earth’s, checked against the published area.

245,000km²Great Lakes
244,000km²Guinea

200 km

Great Lakes
Guinea

Great Lakes: Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, counted together. Lake Saint Clair and the connecting rivers are not counted. Lakes Michigan and Huron are joined by the Straits of Mackinac and stand at one water level, which is why some sources treat them as a single lake; here they are kept as the two lakes Natural Earth draws.

What fits

Guinea is 100% of the size of Great Lakes.
The measured areas differ by 686 km², less than half a percent: closer than the measurement itself is certain.
Measured in Belgiums: Great Lakes is about 7.99, Guinea about 7.97.

How they differ

Their centres are about 7,910 km apart.
A standard web map misstates the comparison: Great Lakes at 45°N is drawn about 2.0× too large and Guinea at 10°N about 1.0×, so the map shows Great Lakes as 1.96× the size of Guinea instead of 1.00×.
Together Great Lakes and Guinea cover 489,000 km², close to the size of Spain (499,000 km², 2.1% bigger).
Great Lakes's centre is 34.8° of latitude, about 3,870 km, farther north than Guinea's.
The Great Lakes is a system of lakes and ranks 2nd of the 100 lakes on sizeversus by area if counted as one.
Guinea ranks 78th of 212 countries by area.
Laid out flat, the Great Lakes stretches about 852 km north to south and 1,270 km east to west; Guinea about 610 km by 813 km.
Counted as one, the 5 pieces measure 245,000 km². The published figure for the whole, 244,000 km² (Wikidata, the sum of the published figures of its parts), is 0.4% below it.

Who wins on what

Measure	Winner	By
Larger area	Great Lakes	1.00×
Farther north	Great Lakes	34.8° of latitude
Stretched more on a web map	Great Lakes	2.0× against 1.0×

Both against the same yardsticks

Yardstick	Great Lakes	Guinea
Belgium 30,700 km²	7.99×	7.97×
United Kingdom 244,000 km²	1.00×	1.00×
Germany 358,000 km²	0.68×	0.68×
Japan 374,000 km²	0.66×	0.65×
France 548,000 km²	0.45×	0.45×
India 3,151,000 km²	0.08×	0.08×
Brazil 8,473,000 km²	0.03×	0.03×
United States 9,447,000 km²	0.03×	0.03×
Russia 16,980,000 km²	0.01×	0.01×

Each figure is the place's area divided by the yardstick's.

Side by side

	Great Lakes	Guinea
Is a	Lake system5 pieces counted together	CountryAfrica
Area, measured	245,000 km²94,600 mi²	244,000 km²94,300 mi²
Area, published	244,000 km²Wikidata	246,000 km²Wikidata
Rank by area	2nd of 100lakes	78th of 212countries
Latitude range	41°N to 49°N	7°N to 13°N
On the shore	2 on the shore	–

Published figures: Wikidata (CC0). A lake or a sea has no legal boundary: the measured area is that of Natural Earth’s outline, and it is shown beside the published one.

Natural Earth’s outlines of the United States and Canada contain or lie within 4 km of the outline of the Great Lakes. That is what its geometry says, and it is not a statement about who owns the water or where any border runs in it.

Similar in size to Great Lakes

Similar in size to Guinea

More comparisons

Sources and method

Outlines: Lakes and seas: Natural Earth 1:10m physical vectors (public domain), kept only where the measured area is within 10% of the published one. Countries and regions: Natural Earth, 1:10m Admin 0 and Admin 1, public domain.
Boundary: De facto, as drawn by Natural Earth. A lake or a sea has no legal boundary of its own; the outline is a cartographic one.
Area: Measured on the WGS84 ellipsoid from the full-detail outlines, shown rounded. The published figure comes from Wikidata (CC0), fetched 2026-11-11, and is shown beside the measured one.
Drawing: Each outline is projected with an equal-area projection centred on its own centroid, so areas stay true and the two can be laid over each other.
Data built: 2026-11-11

Full method