Island
Great Britain
Natural Earth’s outline of Great Britain measures about 214,000 km² (82,600 mi²), the 8th largest of the 81 islands on sizeversus, and about the same size as Guyana.
- Great Britain
- Guyana
The numbers
- 214,000km²Area, measured82,600 mi² · Natural Earth outline
- 229,000km²Area, publishedWikidata · 6.6% above our measure, flagged
The area is measured from the outline drawn above, on the WGS84 ellipsoid; the published figure is shown beside it, and a water body is kept only if the two are within 10%. This one is between 5% and 10% apart, so it is flagged and no comparison is built for it automatically.
What the numbers say about Great Britain
- Greenland (island), the largest of the 81 islands ranked on sizeversus, is 10.2× the size of Great Britain; Great Britain ranks 8th.
- Great Britain sits between Victoria Island (220,000 km²) and Ellesmere Island (196,000 km²) in the ranking.
- Counted as a country, Great Britain would be larger than 129 of the 212 countries listed on sizeversus and would rank 84th by area, between Laos (228,000 km²) and Guyana (211,000 km²).
- It is larger than 37 of the 51 US states and districts (the biggest of them is Kansas, 213,000 km²) and smaller than 14.
- It is larger than 22 of the 31 provinces and regions of China (the biggest of them is Hunan, 211,000 km²) and smaller than 9.
- The closest US state is Kansas (213,000 km²): Great Britain is about the same size as Kansas.
- On a standard web map (Web Mercator), a place at 54°N is drawn about 2.9× too large in area, so Great Britain looks bigger there than it is.
- Laid out flat, Great Britain stretches about 956 km north to south and 513 km east to west.
- Our measured 214,000 km² is 6.6% below Wikidata’s published figure of 229,000 km². This difference is flagged for review: a lake’s outline may include islands or bays that the published figure leaves out, or the water level may differ. The outline is kept because it is within 10%, and this page is not matched automatically to any other.
About the same size as
Countries
Where it lies
Natural Earth’s outlines of the United Kingdom contain or lie within 4 km of the outline of Great Britain. That is what its geometry says, and it is not a statement about who owns the water or where any border runs in it.
Where Great Britain ranks
Great Britain is the 8th largest of the 81 islands on sizeversus, ranked by measured area.
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Sources and method
- Outline
- Natural Earth, 1:10m Geography Regions (geography_regions_polys), public domain (Geography Regions (geography_regions_polys)). Outlines of lakes are drawn at 1:10 million.
- Boundary
- A lake or a sea has no legal boundary of its own. The outline is a cartographic one, and the page says so by showing the measured area beside the published one.
- Area basis
- Measured outline: computed on the WGS84 ellipsoid from the full-detail outline and shown rounded. Published figure: Wikidata (CC0), fetched 2026-11-11. An outline is kept within 10% of the published figure and matched to other places automatically within 5%.
- Shore
- Countries whose Natural Earth outline contains or comes close to the water's outline; computed, not a statement of ownership.
- Drawing
- Each outline is projected with an equal-area projection centred on its own centroid, so areas stay true and two can be laid over each other.
- Data built
- 2026-11-11